If you didn’t read some of the Spyder Trap blogs from the beginning of summer you may have missed something: Spyder Trap hired a summer intern. That intern was me, Parker Abena. A quick bit about me, I am going to be a sophomore at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and I’m majoring in Marketing. I was born and raised in Edina, MN, which is why I was back in the Twin Cities this summer—and looking for a local agency to gain some experience.

I had had some previous internship experiences before starting here. My first was two summers ago when I was an intern at a small start-up, there I did pretty basic tasks and nothing very demanding. My second was one summer ago, and I called it a “mini-internship” where I did my school may-term project with a  brand marketing team for a much bigger company. While there I had a few projects but still nothing too overwhelming. I enjoyed my time at both of these places but I wanted something that would help me learn and challenge me a bit more. Spyder Trap did a great job at that this summer.

Coming into Spyder Trap I was nervous. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to be doing and how well I would be able to do it. I was intimated by the mass amount of talent and knowledge here and didn’t know how I was going to be able to keep up. Well, it turns out it wasn’t too bad. I was given a lot of tasks that I really enjoyed and learned a lot from. The task I enjoyed the most was running the Spyder Trap social media accounts, and not because I’m some 19 year old who can’t put his phone down. No, I enjoyed this mainly because of the social media audits I got to do at the end of each month. I loved seeing the growth and interaction that was created and thinking about how I could make all the numbers keep going up. Other tasks I enjoyed were writing company blog posts (like this one!) and helping brainstorm advertising campaigns. Tasks that could have a very real impact on Spyder Trap’s business.

There is an on-going joke that Mike Rynchek (Spyder Trap CEO) likes to make, it goes something like this:

If we have someone in the office I’m meeting or introducing myself to they will generally ask what I’m majoring in and what I’m doing here. Both of the questions get some response regarding marketing to which Mike loves to then add “So we haven’t ruined that for him yet”. And it’s true, Spyder Trap has given me a great summer with lots of learning and has made me want to keep learning, like encouraging me to become Google Analytics and HubSpot certified, both of which I will be doing at the end of this summer. So as I head back to school in a few weeks I must bid Spyder Trap farewell. But I’m told once a Spyder Trapper, always a Spyder Trapper, which is a team I’m proud to be a part of.