Project 1 for me was our annul health fair. Myself and another intern had been preparing for this for about 4 weeks. I couldn’t wait to see how it was going to turnout.
Everything that could have possibly gone wrong, went wrong!! I came into the office at 7 a.m. (real dedication) and I was waiting on the tables to get delivered. At about 8 Kevin (the other intern) arrived so not ready to work. I think he may have been tired, which was still pretty annoying considering how much we needed to cover by 11 a.m. Anyway, the tables came and we set up, BUT we didn’t have tablecloths for the vendors who requested them. There was some miscommunication and BOOM now we suck. I had to drive around that morning trying to find tablecloths, which was impossible.
To make matters even worse the printer was jammed and my boss couldn’t fix it. So I couldn’t print out registration forms, evaluations, layouts, NOTHING until minutes before the fair started.
By the way we started like 15 minutes late because there was a slow down in, well pretty much everything. Two vendors cancelled the morning of, which almost ruined the layout of the tables. Then the lunch for vendors was late arriving. High stress? Absolutely!!
Staff/volunteers weren’t clear about the seriousness of committing to their roles, which resulted in me doing extra work just so things would run smoothly. I was running around like a chicken with her head cut off.
Although everything sounds terrible no one on the outside had any idea that everything in the world was going wrong behind the scenes. All of the vendors actually complimented me and the fair, which made me feel amazing because I thought I failed miserably.
I was devastated with the turnout, but that’s partially because I’m really hard on myself. However, after a few conversations and thinking about it I gave myself a little credit. Being as though I’ve never planned an event in my life and I only had four weeks to plan this one I don’t think I did too shabby. It was truly a learning experience to say the least.
Btw thanks Alyssa and Kiven for stopping by!
