How to stand up for yourself as a design intern

In 2018 I had my first internship in the Marketing team of HousingAnywhere, a startup in Rotterdam, with the title Marketing Creative Intern. You can imagine that someone in this position has a lot to learn not only about design but also about personal and professional development. Luckily, I had just the perfect environment to learn and grow as a person as in a startup you are given a lot of responsibility even as an intern.

To set up the scene, when I started working there, the company had around 80 employees divided into 6 multidisciplinary teams. The design team consisted of me, my manager( UX designer), a Part-time designer, and a Brand manager.

So let’s get to the point and start with the lessons:

In other words, you don’t necessarily have to work on a “quick task” when your colleagues ask you to.

When I joined the company there was already a proper structure of handling design requests and planning. In spite of that, some colleagues would still try to abuse the fact that I am an intern and push me to prioritize their project and work on something “ quick” right now. At first of course, when you just start your internship you see yourself as this small little puppy and want to please everyone, but there comes a moment when a designer realizes their worth and starts standing up for themselves. And that’s really important. There is nothing such as a quick task. To have an efficient working day the whole workload needs to be properly planned and prioritized. And if someone needs something urgently from you and it’s important, this means that they should have thought to contact you days earlier.

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