By Gabby Freel

My final semester at Westfield State University was made whole by interning with Janice Beetle at Beetle Press. This internship was more fulfilling than I ever thought possible, and I’m truly grateful to have been given this opportunity.

Before coming to work for Janice, I had mainly done creative writing. My forte was poetry, and I had no idea what a press release was supposed to look like. I thought blogging was just talking about your favorite recipes on Pinterest or Tumblr. I had a lot to learn, and Janice had a lot to teach.

One of my first tasks as an intern was to read a client’s manuscript and give any feedback or edits I thought were necessary. This was a new experience, and I learned from Janice some ways in which creative license can be applied.

After the manuscript came blog writing. This is the 20–year anniversary of Beetle Press, so I was tasked with interviewing some of Janice’s first clients and writing blogs on their experiences in working with her. My first phone interview was with Rich Cooper. I was terrified of the phone at the time. I was barely able to muster the courage to enter into an interaction to refill a prescription, never mind interview a stranger.

Nevertheless, I was adamant about facing everything that was thrown at me head on and at full speed. Of course, I wasn’t thrown overboard without a life vest. Janice picked Rich to be first knowing that it would be easy to talk with him. She even did a mock interview with me in the minutes leading up to my phone call with Rich.

After assisting with the blog on Rich, I interviewed Janet Grant and Bonnie Zima Dowd. (Bonnie’s entry will post in two weeks.)

In a not-unusual overlap of relationships in Beetle Press, I continued to work with Rich, but on a project of interest to him and Janice’s colleague at the Springfield Republican, Cynthia Simison. Rich and Cynthia are leaders of the Northampton chapter of Dollars for Scholars, and they were interested in having Janice and I write brief synopses on each of the scholarships, telling the story of the people for whom they are named.

Writing press releases was another skill I was able to hone during this internship. Janice showed me a couple of press releases she had written and then sent me off to try a few myself.

One of the last major tasks that I am still working on is tracking the recent press releases for Beetle Press through an Excel spread sheet. Each time Janice sends a press release to the media for a client, I add it to the Excel file and then indicate where each release is published thereafter. Janice used to be able to track pick-ups using only her memory, but with the volume of press releases she is distributing, that’s now impossible.

I truly valued the experience of being an intern for Beetle Press, and I’m grateful that Janice wants me to continue working with her. I’ve officially graduated from Westfield State University and can put my real-life PR experience to work.

Thank you, Janice. You’re a wonderful mentor, and I’m lucky to also call you my good friend.

The post Life as an Intern at Beetle Press appeared first on Beetle Press.

Dark-humored and boisterous, my new intern Abigail “Abby” Taylor has always seen the value in the written word. That means she will fit right in!

A junior at Westfield State University, Abby has taken pen to paper about nature while sitting on her front porch since the age of 10 in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and she has used writing as a creative and therapeutic tool as well.

Abby grew up with the “Brady Bunch” of three older siblings and two parents. Her house is a caucus full of Democrats, her brother working for a New Hampshire senator and sister Jess working for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. There are two politicians, two teachers, and one caregiver in the family for Abby to emulate. While her mother begs her daily to become a nurse, Abby couldn’t drift from writing if she wanted to, and her father and sister keep her lust for school and education burning.

When junior year rolled around in high school, Abby took a philosophy class with a teacher she will never forget. A septuagenarian who was committed to teaching indefinitely, he inspired Abby to strengthen her work ethic. This mentor conditioned his students to have thoughtful discussions in class, and that transformed Abby’s learning experience and drive for English studies.

Although Abby’s siblings are everything to her, their vast success has daunted her. Writing allowed her to overcome this hurdle of anxiety. Scripting her darkest feelings turned into a creative process that was therapeutic when she suffered a depressive episode during her senior year of high school.

In her internship at Beetle Press this fall, Abby hopes to take her writing foundation and build on it, learning how writing can be used in the work place to raise awareness for organizations and tell their rich stories. She also hopes to deepen her knowledge of the creative writing process.

Abby’s dad says she has the soul of a writer, which means worlds to her, since he was a sports columnist before he became a teacher. Abby and her father identify as the “thinkers” of the family—the philosophical intellectuals.

So, at Westfield State, where she is majoring in English with a concentration in writing, Abby is taking ethnic and gender studies classes, and writing classes in fiction and poetry. In creative writing last year, she realized her niche for poetry. She wants to write poetry that contributes to the conversation of our nation’s well-being, evoking feeling that can be put into action.

Abby also has a deep interest in music and considered an internship with the WSKB radio station on her campus. After an interview with me, she decided she enjoyed the at-home work environment of my office and could see herself grinding words away at my dining table—the intern station here. Also, in a meeting with her internship coordinator at school, Professor George Layng told Abby that working with me would expand both her business and creative writing capabilities. On board she came!

Abby hopes her internship will help her advance her skills so that she can write about issues she cares about, such as the current political climate, the human experience, and turning mundane observation into graphic imagery.

She will be doing research, writing press releases, helping with social media and contributing to other projects. I hope Abby can also help me grow my audience on JaniceBeetle.com and help me finalize a manuscript I have been working on for too many years.

Abby will graduate in May 2019. She hopes to eventually write for a magazine or possibly enter the PR industry. I can see already that, even though she is quiet—like I was at her age—Abby is intelligent, learns quick, and has a real depth of spirit. I believe her father is correct. Abby has a writer’s soul, and I hope to help her dig deeper—to write and operate from a profound place in all her work.

The post Fall Intern has a Writer’s Soul appeared first on Beetle Press.

Inevitably, interns make little goofs and mistakes here and there, and my response is always to offer them a course correction and a bit of advice—and a tale that will help them feel less silly and inexperienced.

I have a few stories up my sleeve for this purpose, all based on my own goofs and mistakes; each has its own moral.

I realized I should offer these stories up via my blog because it’s good for all of us to remember that we are always learning, and the anecdotes are also good for a laugh.

When I see interns who have confidence issues, I sit them down and let them know what I see as their strong suits and the skills they bring to the table. I tell them they need to trust themselves and work on mining their self-assurance. I say I had a serious lack of faith in myself when I was in college, and I tell this story:

I was a senior at Westfield State College. It was 1985, and I had spent the semester working at what was then called the Springfield Morning Union. (This paper later became the Union-News when it merged with the Springfield Daily News and later became what we know today as the Springfield Republican.)

My journalism professor, the late and fabulous Dave Humphrey, had arranged the internship for me and well-guided me in my four months in the Living department, where I wrote wedding and engagement announcements and also wrote a few feature stories.

Dave was the assistant managing editor at the Morning Union. One day, he told me that a man named Tom Haggerty would be calling me. Dave didn’t explain that Tom was an important guy, then the paper’s managing editor, and he didn’t tell me that Tom was going to offer me a job.

So, I’m in my on-campus apartment one afternoon, and Tom calls me. He offers me a part-time correspondent job covering Granby and South Hadley. I felt he might as well have asked me to climb Mount Everest or orbit the moon.

I said, “Oh, thank you so much, but I don’t think I’d be very good at that.”

There was an awkward pause on Tom’s end. We made polite small talk, and then he said thank you, and we hung up.

When I saw Dave next, he hollered to me from down the hall in Bates, an academic building I had many of my classes in at Westfield State.

“Beetle. In my office,” he said.

Dave gestured for me to sit, and I did.

“Did Tom Haggerty call you?” he asked me. He was clearly in a snit.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did he offer you a job?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you say no?”

“Yes,” I repeated.

“You’re an asshole,” he said.

Dave explained that I had spent four years preparing for such a job and that I was a qualified candidate and a good writer. I did not know this.

“What you’re going to do,” he said, “is you’re going to call Tom back. You’re going to tell him you’d be a great reporter and that you would be ecstatic to have the opportunity to work for the Springfield Morning Union.”

“Okay,” I said. And I called Tom back, and I got the job, and here I am today, very thankful that someone had my back so long ago. I honestly can’t say where I would be without Dave and his faith in me and my abilities. He was right. I was a good reporter. I was fast and accurate, and I had compassion.

I wish Dave were still alive, so I could take him out for a drink or a cup of coffee and thank him for being a good mentor and guide and tell him what that support has meant to me. Instead, what I can do is try to also be a good mentor and guide myself.

The post Giving Back for Good Mentoring appeared first on Beetle Press.

My baby toys were tossed into Salvation Army bins and the rest went up in flames in the biggest bonfire my backyard had ever seen. I spent the next seven months living in a trailer with no running water, which forced me to take a semester off from school so I could take on the four jobs that would allow me to find a new stable and reliable place to call home.

Now, a full two years since I lost everything, it only makes sense that my first assignment for Janice and Beetle Press was to design various projects for Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity, a local organization that builds stable and reliable homes for those in need. It was an assignment that was meant to be.

When I began my internship in January, in the last semester of my senior year at Westfield State University, Janice connected me with Amy Landry, director of resource development with the Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity. I felt the purpose of my personal and professional lives had joined together.

In the few months I have worked with Amy, I have assisted in the design of Habitat’s annual report, edited and laid out a newsletter, and refreshed the old design of invitations for the organization’s FEAST for Humanity fundraising event coming up April 27, as well as lawn signs and posters in order to spread the word about it.

Beetle Press uses storytelling and design to help raise awareness for the organizations it supports. In this case, Beetle Press forwarded the organization’s mission and offered me experience simultaneously. This, even though Janice was unaware of my story of homelessness or the ways this assignment would touch me personally.

In my work for Habitat for Humanity, I have come to know women who have taken charge of their own living situations and have East Street in Easthampton to call home now. They are Aleta and Angelique, and I have deeply enjoyed connecting with them.

Angelique is a single mother of three who has devoted herself to providing a safe and loving home for her children. “I remember being so stressed out, yet I still kept it together for them,” she told me.

Aleta is raising her grandson and had to move from a South Hadley apartment that was causing health issues. “It’s safe. It’s practical. It’s in a beautiful location, and nature is so important to me,” she says of her new Habitat home.

Angelique and Aleta’s Habitat home is eco-friendly, affordable and most importantly, built with 250 hours of their own “sweat equity,” as Habitat for Humanity calls it. Another amazing feat about East Street is the fact that a majority of the volunteers on this build were women.

I keep Angelique and Aleta—and all the others who benefit from Habitat’s work—in mind as I complete the program for the FEAST event. I’m humbled that my design work via Beetle Press is benefitting a great cause and an organization that is so meaningful to me.

The post An Assignment that Hit Home appeared first on Beetle Press.

I am a 20-year-old senior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Originally from Pomfret Conn., I fell in love with Amherst and wanted to stay in the area over the summer, so I searched the Pioneer Valley for an internship and found one!

As an undergraduate, I am pursuing a degree in communications with a minor in information technology. I first learned about Beetle Press when I began my summer internship search and spotted it on the UMass Career Services listings. It seemed a great fit for expanding on my social media and PR experience. I am enthusiastic about working with local businesses, especially in Western Mass, and am eager to have joined the Beetle Press team.

When I got started the spring semester interns—Shelby Ashline, Maddie Cicitto and Vanessa Pesa—were still on board, so I got to learn some tricks from them. It was nice to have that overlap and meet interns who were a lot like me and had a lot of similar interests.

This is my first internship, so I am a little nervous about getting started. I’m not sure what to expect or whether I’ll enjoy my work. Nevertheless, Janice and the previous interns have so far exceeded my expectations in training me and getting me started. Even in the first few weeks, I have already learned so much about public relations and social media practices. Now I’m gearing up to reach out to interview clients about their own work and their work with Beetle Press. Even this short experience so far has taught me that I am on the right career path in public relations.

When I am not working on my internship or studying for classes, I spend my time with the Alpha Chi Omega sorority on campus as the vice president of recruitment in the Delta Mu Chapter. Serving there as a part of the executive board had really taught me the ins-and-outs of running an organization. It also had taught me a lot about social media and networking, which has been beneficial to both this internship and other opportunities.

In my free time, I enjoy exploring the local area. I love to hike and spend time outdoors, especially with the warm weather! I also enjoy music, collecting record albums—or vinyls—and some arts and crafts when I have the time!

The post Meet the New Intern! appeared first on Beetle Press.