Fellow intern James has just come to the end of his internship with Event Durham. I thought it would be good to hear his perspective on life as an intern, what he has learnt and what he plans on doing next! Here's what James had to say...

 Hi, my name is James and I have just completed a seven month internship at Event Durham. At Event Durham, as well as sharing an office with Retail, we manage events taking place across the University. I applied for this internship after enjoying my time spent organising events for SCA, the University’s student volunteering service, during which I worked closely with the Event Durham to book rooms and catering.

 In my internship role, I was part of the Conference Administration team, responsible for assisting academics with the organisation of large conferences within the University. However, as well as this fascinating job, my role as intern was much more varied. I was involved in areas as diverse as marketing of the family activities taking place at Durham University Visitor Attractions, building a new website for the Botanic Garden, taking bookings for our Summer Study programme and driving all over Durham delivering poster boards! On top of that, ... read more

Ask anyone in the office and they will tell you that Summer Congregation is definitely my favourite time of year! Well they might say Christmas Festival and Summer Congregation but you get my gist. As Retail Supervisor I am responsible for the planning and co-ordination and the smooth running of the event.

 I just love the rush of the week long event, meeting all the graduates and their lovely proud families. You get to meet so many people, from so many different cultures. It’s not only that though – a lot goes into the preparation of the event during the months prior and I enjoy that just as much as the week on the shop floor.

Now you may wonder what sort of things need to be planned this far in advanced, but believe me when I say that there’s so much to think about.

First comes all the operational matters… arranging transport to collect the stock and shop units, hiring tills and PDQ card machines, ordering floats and arranging cash collections… the list goes on. Then comes the fun part: we get to hire a bunch of Durham University students as sales assistants for the week! I love every stage of this; from shortlisting ... read more