My eventful summer – Kailee Trogstad

When I look back over the past eight months, I have a lot of mixed feelings about my internship with the Minnesota Twins. When I began in January, the stadium was always quiet, except for when we had events going on. After spring training, when the Twins came back for their first game, I felt like my ‘home’ was being taken over; for a while I had forgotten I worked at a baseball stadium. So when thousands of people arrived for the first game, and the hallways became crowded with media personnel, baseball players, security, and fans, I was caught off-guard by the controlled chaos. However, the excitement and energy all of these people brought to the stadium, became very exciting and something I quickly began to look forward to.

Since the beginning of the baseball season, my weeks have been up and down; between seven to ten days of homestands, where my 8-hour days consisted of emails, phone calls, meetings and site visits, to a week of no baseball games, 14-hour days, and executing booked events. This summer has flown by with the inconsistency of work-days and events. I am sad to see the baseball season coming to an end; however, I am looking forward to ‘taking over’ the baseball stadium again, and having more events during the week. Although, I secretly will kind of miss running around in mascot costumes during the fourth inning at baseball games, and wearing wedding dresses to promote our events.

When I came into this internship, I did not have much experience working on a variety of events. However, I can now say that I have experience in events hosting 20 people to 25,000 people. It has been really interesting working with different clients, and seeing the way corporate companies will utilize their monetary funds into the design and presentation of their meetings and receptions. I have also really enjoyed assisting with fundraisers and coordinating weddings, where everyone has been looking forward to that one special day. Gaining experience with sales, budgets, contracts, assisting, event coordinating, time management, and marketing, has really been a beneficial experience for my future career, and I am looking forward to where this internship will lead me.