Student Completes Internship

David Shaw

Holly Sauer, a senior in the Technical/Professional Writing program at PSU, spent last summer as an intern in Humboldt, Tennessee, with American Woodmark, a leading manufacturer and distributor of kitchen and bath cabinets.

Sauer learned of the internship by talking with American Woodmark representatives at PSU's annual fall career fair. She recommends that all students attend the career fairs to make contacts and learn about internship and job opportunities.

Sauer began her internship at the end of May and finished the second week of August. She usually worked Monday through Thursday, 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, she often worked Fridays to meet deadlines, and she sometimes started her work day as early as 3:00 a.m. to observe and videotape startup operations at the manufacturing plant.

Sauer worked closely with engineers and machine operators to create written instructions for startup, shutdown, blade changes, safety, quality checks, and trouble shooting. She also created computer based training videos for which she recorded and edited video, wrote the script, and recorded her own voice for the voice-overs. Employees watched the training videos and took quizzes that Sauer created. Sauer also conducted pre-hire classes for potential employees.

Sauer encountered some challenges she hadn't anticipated, such as the difficulty of understanding engineers because they explained everything quickly and used a lot of unfamiliar technical terms. She also learned the importance of being organized and consistent. "I wasted a lot of time at first flipping back through documents to see how I did something before."

The internship had additional benefits besides work experience. Sauer was usually free on weekends to enjoy the sights of Memphis, only an hour away, and Nashville, not much farther. In addition to an hourly wage for her internship work, the company provided her with an apartment and paid her travel costs to and from Pittsburg.

The main benefit Sauer received, however, was the offer of a position with American Woodmark, starting right after she graduated in December with a Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in Technical/Professional writing.