Notes from a Summer Intern

Surprise flowers, sunlight, and ice cream cake. Perhaps those words sound like they belong to a summer party, but it’s a combination of life at Crossover Graphics this week. It’s been a rather hectic week, but we’ve had some fun moments. It’s my last day at Crossover as an intern and I’m going to miss it here.

Crossover is continuing to grow at warp speed. At the beginning of the summer, there were two employees, and now we’ve filled up every space in our office and there are still more employees joining us soon! However, with a company growing as fast as ours, we knew it would be crazy (or at least we were warned)!

At the beginning of the week, we received a visit from one of Crossover’s partners who is soon to be employed at Crossover. (Little teaser details: he used to work around F-18s and he currently coaches a semi-pro football team. Stay tuned for more details about our soon-to-be new employee!) Even though he only spent a day with us, he emailed Stephanie, our CEO, with nicknames for all of us based on our personalities. It was funny how he accurately described our personalities even though he was only here for a short time.

Yesterday, Sarah, one of our designers, received a surprise visit from her fiancé. He walked in carrying a bouquet of summer wildflowers that looked professionally arranged. But no, he had actually gotten up early to pick the flowers from the garden and arrange them himself. Sarah was beaming for the rest of the day.

As of late, Kate, Sarah, and I discovered how much we like natural lighting. We have four big windows in our office, so we keep the lights off all day unless it’s absolutely thunderstorm pitch black outside. Sunlight is so much prettier and calming compared to the harsh fluorescent lights. (And as an extra bonus, we’re cutting down the electricity bills.)

Since today is my last day as a summer intern at Crossover, Stephanie arranged a surprise lunch with sub sandwiches, chips, cheesy dip, and homemade ice cream cake (Sarah’s family recipe). So, that was fun.

I am going to miss working at Crossover on a day-to-day basis. It’s the little things that make a job meaningful. I’ve learned so much being here, things such as:

-- “Rockstar” is an amazing word and some of the highest praise you can give a person
-- Just because it’s not really funny doesn’t mean you can’t laugh about it
-- Coffee and sticky notes are great ways to encourage others
-- Mac computers make crunchy sounds when you delete items from your trash can. It makes me happy.
-- Mac computers have icons that bounce when they want attention (and it annoys me so much that I must immediately stop and squash the icon)
-- There are a million social media sites and I am convinced they spontaneously generate because I keep hearing about new sites
-- If it’s electronic, it will break
-- Sometimes your best work is produced when you have to use pen and paper because the computer is sulking and refuses to unfreeze
-- CEOs and co-workers can become your friends
-- Sticky notes are some of the best inventions ever
-- Filling up a notebook with press releases and other stories you’ve written is pretty fun
-- Dreams aren’t so impossible

Probably the reason why I liked working for Crossover so much is because 1) the people here have become friends, and 2) they haven’t forgotten how to dream. One of Crossover’s goals is that the company feel like family -- and it does. We all work really well together and we know that we can approach even the executives whenever we need something. Secondly, especially with the economy now, many of the things Crossover wants to do seem absolutely crazy. Yet, Crossover is growing beyond what many people thought was possible. Yes, pursuing dreams is never “safe,” but it’s an adventure and we’re going to fly because that’s where God is leading us.

--Ashley High is a PR Intern at Crossover Graphics (www.crossovergraphics.com)