Week Four at OHSU

After a vacation back home and some time off, I am back at OHSU for my fourth week. It is good to be back and working again because I am picking up right where I left off on developing market research. We had a department meeting today which was very motivating and I feel that my research is actually helping. For the first time at my internship, I feel like our department has a consensus on what direction we want to take the program. This makes my job a lot easier because I can now focus my research more and start working with actual numbers and real data. I met with my supervisor after our division meeting and he assigned me to develop the marketing plan for the new program. This is a pretty daunting task because I have never developed a marketing plan, I am the only person working on it and there are no guidelines for it. Basically, I have to present a marketing plan to the department next week that either the department and all of the teachers in the program and they will then will vote to either move forward with my plan or develop a new one.
I am excited to start putting together the marketing plan and I know that this will push me and be a great learning experience, but it is very intimidating as well. I am nervous that I won't make a good impression on the rest of the department but I also don't want to disappoint my supervisor. My supervisor has given me the opportunity to work and learn in a great environment and I want him to feel warranted for his decision to select me for the internship. As I spend more time in the office, I am continuing to develop relationships with more and more of the staff. It's a little weird because I am surrounded by a bunch of people with PHDs and multiple degrees, yet the way they act and conduct themselves is so low key. I have noticed that everyone is very sensitive when they have a disagreement in the way that no one ever tries to pull rank or seniority. Even the head of the department is always very cautious while discussing a disagreement and never tries to value his perspectives more then anyone's. It is interesting to watch and listen to the different perspectives that people bring from their different background of schooling and current position in the department.
As I enter my final week of my internship, I am very excited, stressed and nervous about giving my presentation. I want to put together the best marketing plan that I can but also deliver a presentation that is acceptable for experienced professionals and not just a presentation for my class at Linfield. I want to make my supervisor proud and demonstrate everything that he has taught me over the past four weeks. I feel that Linfield has given me most of the tools to do well throughout this internship and prepared me for this final presentation, and I hope that I can deliver a plan that is beneficial to my department.