COMM 368 Internship Archive & Reflection

For COMM 368, I was required to complete a final internship project showcasing my work and reflecting on my experience. Throughout the Spring 2025 semester, I worked with the Tidewater Queer History Project as a Social Media/Outreach Intern, and I managed the TQHP Instagram account @tidewaterqueer.

Archive

The Story of Tidewater's Queer Community

This Instagram reel is part of a docuseries I produced to tell The Story of our local queer community, told from the perspective of the Hershee Bar - what was once the east coast's oldest lesbian bar. Though we have lost many queer spaces to time, the people themselves continue, and it is this love for our community that will give us the strength to fight for our rights.

Queer Spaces in the 757

This Instagram reel was one of the first I produced, intended as a visual of how many queer spaces Tidewater once hosted. By showing how proliferate the queer community once was in Hampton Roads, we make the statement that we have always been here, and we will always be here.

Tidewater Queer History Timeline

This set of posts was a collaboration between me and the Archiving Intern at TQHP, Kenny Wilcox. They wrote some of the profiles showcased here, and edited others from past Queer Studies students.

Reflection

How has your internship experience shaped your views of your major and/or your career aspirations or plans? What aspects of your internship helped you to clarify your career goals?

This internship confirmed for me that I am on the right career path, and that I truly enjoy working with non-profit organizations whose missions align with my own. When I first began studying as an English major, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to apply my skills and knowledge. I knew I didn’t want to become a teacher, a journalist, or an author, although those initially seemed like my only options. Yet I knew I loved studying and commanding language, I loved storytelling and crafting a narrative, and as a Sociology minor, I knew I wanted to write about and advocate for social issues. It wasn’t until I learned I could double minor in Sociology and Communication that the pieces started to fall into place. Using my strengths in English and storytelling, as well as the technical skills I picked up studying Communication, I could provide much value to an organization that needed to push its message into the world. Then with the Tidewater Queer History Project (TQHP), my beliefs were confirmed, as I was able to apply all my combined knowledge into advocating for queer rights and equality through the sharing of our local history. Ms. Rhodes and I worked together to produce these documentary-type videos for TQHP’s Instagram page, connecting the queer community’s past political advocacy to today’s issues. Not only did this affirm my career aspirations to use my work to do something meaningful, but it gave me personal satisfaction and confidence that I could take these skills anywhere.

What skills or experiences from your internship do you think will be most valuable in your future career?

My supervisor, Cathleen Rhodes, told me that one of my many strengths is my professionalism, and that it has made working with me this semester go very smoothly. After demonstrating my strong work ethic at the beginning of the semester, Ms. Rhodes trusted me to manage my own time, allowing me to decide what tasks I wanted to work on and when. The discipline it takes to manage one’s own time is a skill I have learned to hone, and it has helped me to feel less disorganized and overwhelmed on a daily basis. By breaking up large tasks into smaller ones completed over time, and keeping track of deadlines/tasks with a schedule and to-do list, I was able to harness my boundless energy and passion for this project and still push myself to grow.

Ms. Rhodes also gave me the creative freedom to write my own scripts for my Instagram docuseries. Perusing TQHP’s historical archives revealed an overarching story of Tidewater’s queer community, one of strength, resilience, and love through hardship. Talking about this story with Ms. Rhodes helped me to connect our past to our present, realizing that many of the same talking points used against the queer community then are being rehashed in today’s political sphere. Through my docuseries, I was able to tell these stories from our past as a narrative of queer rights advocacy. I hope to take this experience in storytelling to my future projects and continue advocating for marginalized communities.

How well did your coursework prepare you for your internship experience? In what ways did your internship experiences connect to your classroom learning? Provide specific examples.         

In my Strategic Communication Campaigns course, we worked with real-world clients to develop outreach campaigns for their organizations, similar to my work with TQHP. I specifically chose the course to help inform my work with my internship, and I learned one of the most important parts of marketing and outreach is determining what message you want to tell your audience, and how you go about conveying that message. My StratComm client was the Earth Viability Center (EVC), and we worked together to develop an outreach campaign for the platform they are developing, Place4Us.net. The mission of Place4Us is to provide a user-owned virtual space for communities of various disciplines and social causes to share dialogue and organize activist efforts. By the end of the campaign, I had developed a message, a story for our outreach – rather than telling our audience what changes they need to make in the world, we would ask them instead: what kind of world do you want to live in? In doing so, we could encourage them to share their perspectives on the platform.

I applied this same method of storytelling to my work in my internship. The story of Tidewater’s local queer community is the message. In a political atmosphere of rising transphobia, we are faced with a slippery slope that threatens to undo all the progress we have made for gay & lesbian rights. It is necessary, more than ever, to support our community and use our voices to speak up for our rights, and the rights of others. Through resilience, organized efforts of solidarity, and a refusal to be silenced, we will get through these difficult times, and this is the message we want to convey on TQHP’s social media platform. We can learn from our community’s past resistance to consider how to approach today’s issues and achieve the fair and equal future we all deserve.

What advice would you offer future interns working at the same location?

Make the most out of your time – you will grow as much as you push yourself to. With social media management in particular, you have so much creative freedom to make the internship experience whatever you want. Lay the foundation of your skillset now by experimenting with/practicing what mediums of content writing work best for you. And if you are trusted with managing your own time, consider it a privilege and a sign of your abilities. Some supervisors are micromanagers because they don’t trust their subordinates to complete the tasks they’ve been given. Ms. Rhodes, however, will show you that she believes you can represent TQHP well if you display enough passion and commitment to your work. That trust means everything. It means you are transitioning from a student to a true professional.

In addition, don’t be afraid to ask questions. It’s okay to ask for help, especially when you have such a great team to assist and guide you in your development. No one can know everything, but asking around and doing your own research will take you further than simply wondering. You might think you’re being an inconvenience by asking Ms. Rhodes for help, especially since she can be very busy at times, but she is an incredibly rich resource of knowledge and can help put things in a perspective you hadn’t considered before. It’s okay to take up space, so long as you are considerate and mindful of others’ time.

What's next for you professionally?

While I will be job hunting after graduation this summer, I’ve spoken with my other client, the Earth Viability Center, about continuing my outreach work with them. They have given me a soft job offer of being their social media manager on Bluesky, and told me to stay in touch as they work on acquiring a grant to fund a new position in the organization for me. I am incredibly thrilled about this potential opportunity, and I’ve deeply enjoyed collaborating with the people at EVC. Their values align with mine about building a more diverse and inclusive world, and I think my work with TQHP will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role. I also hope there is a possibility for me to continue collaborating with TQHP in some fashion, though this is still to be explored. Queer rights and advocacy have long been my passion and something very personal to me. I believe all humans deserve the right to live their lives as they choose, and not only to live, but to thrive and be happy. Wherever I go, I hope I will be able to use my skills and knowledge to work on making the world a better place for all. It is this love for community that drives me to do my best in everything I do.