Week 1: Introduction

Hi! My name is Taylor Jennings and I am (sadly) a rising senior at Wake Forest University. I am from a small town right outside of Winston-Salem called Lewisville. I am a Psychology Major and an Entrepreneurship & Social Enterprise Minor. I came into Wake pretty open-minded about what course of study I wanted to take and just wanted to figure out my interests. After a couple classes, I fell in love Psychology and decided to declare it as my major, but hadn’t found anything I wanted to declare as a minor. Soon after, I fell in love with the Entrepreneurship & Social Enterprise class I was taking and knew it had to be my minor. Psych and Entrepreneurship seems like a weird combination, right? Maybe it is, but I love it. And more recently, I’ve gained an interest for research. This past academic year, I served as an undergraduate research assistant for a psychology professor and took two psychological research methods courses. I learned that I love looking at data and numbers and making solid, concrete decisions from those numbers. As the academic year was nearing its end and everyone was applying to internships and jobs for the summer, I knew I wanted to do something with research. Having already had experience with psychological research, I wanted to get some experience with the business side of research. This is what drove me to my summer internship.

Tomorrow will be my first day as a Market Research Intern at Addison Whitney, a global branding firm headquartered in Charlotte, NC. I will admit I am a little nervous because this will be my first internship ever, but I’m also excited! I am hoping to gain quite a bit from this 8-week long summer internship. First, I am hoping to gain new knowledge and experience in the market research field and the branding industry in general. Second, I am hoping to gain professional experience and skills from this internship. I’ve never worked in a professional office environment so I want to learn how to properly conduct myself professionally and this internship will be great for this goal. Third, I hope to solidify a career path I want to pursue after graduation through this internship. At the moment, I am torn between two different routes: getting my Master’s in Industrial/Organizational Psychology or getting my MBA in Marketing. As mentioned earlier, I’ve already had experience in psychological research. This internship will show me the business side of research and will hopefully provide insight into which route I am more interested in going down. Last, I want to create professional networks and hopefully find a professional mentor. But, in general, I’m super excited for this summer and am eager to see how this internship goes!