A Day in the Life: Intern

Start of day

You’re jolted awake by someone laughing in your dorm hallway, bright sunlight streaming through your window. 

“Uh oh,” you think to yourself. “I’m late for work!” 

But you quickly remember there’s no such thing as being late for work at Flywheel (unless you have a scheduled meeting), because of your favourite Flywheel perk: flexible hours. You take your time getting up, thinking about the classes you have this week and how you’re going to schedule your work days around them. 

Today is one of your favourite days of the month. You’ve been planning Flywheel’s virtual monthly social for the past couple of weeks with another intern and you’re excited for the team to get together and have some fun online.  But before that fun, you check in on your other tasks.

You hop online and check Slack and Notion, two tools you can’t live without at Flywheel. You chuckle at a few memes some team members have been sending back and forth (who knew you’d be the type of person to appreciate a meme about SEO?) and dive in. 

Mid-morning

You’re working on a blog post for a client and implementing some technical SEO recommendations for another. You’ve never dabbled in technical SEO before, but you’ve been given a good amount of mentorship and you’ve learned to trust your instincts. Besides, if you mess up, you know your lead will treat it as a teachable moment so you’re not totally on your own. While chit-chatting with another fellow intern, she tells you she’s working on a creative Facebook ad campaign. Cool! maybe you can do that next time.

You had a bad case of imposter syndrome when you first started your internship, but as your 4-month co-op comes to an end this month, you realize you’ve accepted challenges, made a lot of mistakes, learned from them, and gotten the real-life work experience you never could have in school. You’ve gotten to work with a variety of top businesses in a short period of time and feel like you’ve crammed years of experience and learning into just a few months.

Back to the blog post. 

You’ve been trying to get in flow but you’re feeling stuck. The dreaded writer’s block. 

Although people at Flywheel respect each other’s flow time, it’s just not happening for you. Your wrists are starting to get sore and your eyes are beginning to strain. You don’t have any urgent projects due today and it’s a beautiful day outside so you decide to go for a walk and come back to the blog post in the evening. You feel like your creative mind will wake up after some fun at the Flywheel social. Plus, it’s going to rain this weekend so you can hunker down and complete any outstanding tasks if you need to.

Afternoon

As you walk through your campus thinking about the past 4 months at Flywheel, you remember a particularly challenging project you worked on when you first joined the team. 

You remember how nervous and stumped you were when your manager brought you on, using a WordPress plugin you had never worked with before. The plugin was frustrating and wasn’t the most user-friendly, but you used it as an opportunity to push yourself and problem solve. In the end, you were proud of the final result you delivered with your team of marketing experts and still brag to your friends about it. It doesn’t hurt that it’ll be a standout on your resume either!

Along the way, you’ve learned tangible technical skills like technical SEO strategies, refining your writing to fit various clients’ needs, HR strategy, and basic WordPress page design. You’ve learned how to use tools like Ahrefs, Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Notion—you just love seeing your task cards disappear as you complete them! You’ve also sharpened your time and project management skills, working in an environment that values flex time and autonomy. In the beginning, you would take long breaks and realize you left a ton of work for yourself over the weekends. But now, with the help of your manager, you’ve learned how to properly prioritize projects and tasks—a valuable skill you can use in your future years at school and in the workplace when you graduate.

Late afternoon

All right. Time for the Flywheel Social! 

This is one of the tasks bestowed upon interns, and one you love to be involved in. Today, you and your fellow intern have planned a virtual scavenger hunt and a TikTok contest. You can’t wait to see what your elder Millennial co-workers have come up with, as half of them didn’t even know how to use TikTok before this week. After a lot of laughs and virtual banter, the social is done with smashing success. 

You’re always pleasantly surprised at how close and connected you feel to the team, even though they’re situated all over Canada and you haven’t met most of them in real life. You realize that because Flywheel is a remote-first company, you get what you put into its culture. Actively participating in conversations, meetings, and socials has led you to become fast friends with your coworkers. 

You’re feeling much more creative and can get to that blog post now. As words flow out of you till sundown, you appreciate the freedom and trust Flywheel gives its interns. No one chases you down to make sure your work gets done—it’s on you to be autonomous and motivated, but you can always count on your managers for support, when needed.

End of day

The day draws to a close. You finish up with a bit of extra school work, answer any outstanding Slack messages, and prep your tasks for the next day, before settling into bed with Netflix on your screen, feeling grateful for another productive day. 

We’re always looking for talented Flywheelers to join our team! Check out our open positions and connect with us on social media to keep in touch.