Want to know what it’s like to be an intern at Consumers? Western Michigan University junior Maddie Paciorek tells all in this edition of “Money, I’m Home.”

 

[transcript]

00:06 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Money, I’m Home. Welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. From finance to fitness, we have it all. Thanks for joining our podcast this week. We have a very special guest today, Maddie Paciorek. Maddie, any… you know what I really… I’ve only met you face-to-face, I think, once because of COVID. Isn’t that funny?

00:28 Maddie Paciorek: It’s crazy.

00:31 LJJ: Hey, welcome on in, Maddie. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Today, we’re going to learn a little bit about internships, and we have a fabulous internship program here at Consumers Credit Union, and Maddie has been our marketing intern. So we’re going to find a little bit about you, but then also really… Oh my goodness, the world has changed so drastically. We’d love to hear about what a college student is thinking as we move forward.

00:56 MP: Well, Lynne, as you said, I am the marketing intern at Consumers Credit Union. A little bit of background about me is that I’m a junior at Western Michigan University. I am studying as my major food and consumer package goods marketing, and I also have a minor in business analytics. For extracurriculars, I am the director of professional development for the Food Marketing Association. So that’s a new position for me. And I’m also an active member of the American Marketing Association, which is pretty exciting. So I’m very involved in the Business College. On top of that, I work in the Business College two jobs, and so that the first one being a student ambassador. So, I spend a lot of time engaging with incoming students or prospective students at the Business College. And then I also work as a teaching assistant for the Business 1000, which is our introductory business course. So, it keeps me really busy when I am in school mode.

01:47 LJJ: It really is almost overwhelming, but so exciting to hear all the things that you’re doing. You know, I’m going to actually jump right in about school, because it is that time of year when everybody’s going back to college. This year is totally different. Tell us about you and what’s been going on at Western, and how are you learning to really get through this whole change of what’s going on in the world?

02:15 MP: It’s really been a huge change. Back in March, when schools all started transitioning to online, it was really different for me because I’m used to being in the Business College from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. almost every day. And so making that switch to working from home, making that switch to learning how to do my meetings online and my classes online and all of my homework online was really a big change for me.

02:41 LJJ: How did you find out about the internship? And then all of a sudden you find out what was supposed to be… It is just, you’re with us every day. You’re walking alongside us. And you’re doing all of your projects, turned into a virtual internship, a little crazy…

02:58 MP: It is really crazy. I was really thankful that Consumers was able to keep my internship for me. I had a lot of friends that were not able to carry out their internships this summer, and so I was really grateful for… just to be able to have this opportunity. I’ve never worked a job 40 hours a week, and so not only learning how to do that and manage that, but also learning how to manage a majority of that online was really, really interesting. It was just really an interesting transition, but Betsy was really great at keeping me updated with all of the constant changes that were happening at Consumers. She called me on a pretty much a bi-weekly basis to make sure that I was updated, gauging my comfort level with returning back to work and just seeing where I was at.

03:41 LJJ: That is an interesting thought. Here we are, and you have the opportunity to learn that back to work philosophy, what it means, the safety issues that come with that, and the concerns that then are addressed. As you’re heading back to school and you’re heading back to all of the different volunteer and work relationships that you have, what is it that you think, or has there been a lot of communication about what changes might be coming your way? Is it still a day-by day, you’re learning something new?

04:17 MP: I think it’s really a day-by-day sort of thing, and I try to take it day-by day as best as possible. For example, last night, MSU decided that all of their dorms were going to no longer have students in them, and so we’re facing changes on a daily basis, which makes it hard to plan, and me being a planner at heart, that’s difficult to kind of be adaptable with, but I’m doing the best that I can. I know, for example, the Food Marketing Association—we made the decision to make all of our meetings online, which is really hard for us, because we really love to engage with students face-to-face. We love to have our social events face-to-face, but in terms of safety and regulations, we really have to be careful with that. So, it’s a whole new idea of how do we communicate with students online, how do we encourage students to still stay involved, even though it’s going to be another WebEx or Zoom call added to their daily schedule. So just trying to find ways to keep students engaged, despite the fact that we’re really going to be doing everything from a distance.

05:15 LJJ: When you found out about the Consumers internship or other internships that you learned that were out there. Number one, why did you choose Consumers? And then number two, how valuable is an internship for your education and for others?

05:31 MP: Back in the fall, I had been looking at a variety of different internships and started to apply to some, but Consumers really spoke to me because I was able to connect with different employees from the company from a variety of events that I had attended. And I really saw how much people loved to work for Consumers. I was able to kind of see an insight into the company culture, and it really matched a lot of what I wanted to do. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do within marketing, so this internship gave me a lot of different experiences, so I could kind of touch every aspect of marketing, which was really, really cool. For internships in general, I think it’s an amazing experience to be able to have hands-on work, and I would recommend it to any student that has the opportunity to, because you really get to see what you were studying in the real working world, which is incredible.

06:23 LJJ: I think one of the components of your internship that I was most in awe over was your presentations. You would give weekly presentations on topics that we were all dealing with, so I can tell you that as a nod from a CMO, it was just really, really exciting to see. What was your most favorite part? And what are you most proud of?

06:46 MP: I think my favorite part was just being able to have so many hands-on projects. Each week, I had a short-term project that I could really deep dive into and give my own feedback, my own input. And so it made me feel like I was having a real impact on where things were going. In terms of most proud of, I would say my long-term project is on financial education, and it was really cool to take that project and make it my own. I’m going to have ownership over that project, and so I started kind of looking at where we had come already before I joined the team, so what kind of planning other team members have done before me, have conversations with people that had already been involved in that financial education realm, and then I kind of took it that step further. I started scheduling demos with different vendors and taking a little bit deeper of a dive. I get to do a presentation this afternoon, so I’m really excited to be able to share what I’ve compiled over the last couple of months.

07:43 LJJ: One of the things that I think is unique and exciting is how whatever you are working on transfers into what our members and our teammates learn, and it’s a two-way street. As a college student, coming into college and then heading into the real world… Financial education is something that a lot of times people say, “Oh, you learn that at home. You can learn it if you have it in a high school class,” but really that’s the age in college and heading out that it is critical.

08:19 MP: Definitely. Financial education is important for everyone, but I think especially for college students. It’s the first time that they are living on their own. It’s the first time that they’re kind of making their own decisions. And so they may be getting a credit card, they may start needing to know how to budget, or they need to know how to pay off their student loans and how to kind of manage all of that. And so, it’s really an important time for students to take ownership of their financial education and really know what steps they need to be taking.

08:47 LJJ: Well, Maddie Paciorek, you have been a delight in our program, and we are very excited for your future, so thank you so much for being with us today and giving us an inside look at what it’s like to be an intern here at Consumers.

09:00 MP: Thank you so much, Lynne.

09:02 LJJ: Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Money, I’m Home. Hey, we’d like to thank Jake Esselink for his wonderful editing skills. Join us next week, and if you have a topic like us to talk about, please send it our way. Money, I’m Home, from finance to fitness with Consumers Credit Union.

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