Second to Last Week of Work

It is crazy how fast this semester has flown by. I was just at my uncle's house last night when he asked how many more weeks I was working. I told Lewis only four more days. He said it seems like you just started and I completely agreed.

I'm very sad that my time at the Aquarium is almost over. It has been such an amazing experience for me. I worked for an agency this summer, so I enjoy seeing the different experiences between agency and corporate.

Last week, I continued working on my Meltwater assignment. I also met with the public relations team to discuss upcoming events which included Earth Day, Jazz journeys and Mother's day. The team worked on blurbs about each event that we sent out to numerous media outlets in the area for their calendar listings.

Wednesday afternoon, the Georgia Aquarium partnered with Children's Health care of Atlanta and the Falcons to host a Fishy Fun Day. Seven Falcons players and nine children from Children's Health care of Atlanta did arts and crafts at the Aquarium and went on a behind the scenes tour. It was a great experience, which the kids and players really enjoyed. I was excited because Thomas Brown was one of the players who attended. Thomas graduated from the University of Georgia last year and was in one of my speech communication classes three semesters ago. It was great to see him again!

Journey with the Gentle Giants

This was a short week for me because my aunt got married in Augusta on Sunday, so I could not come to work on Monday.

Wednesday, however, was a very special day. I went on a journey with the gentle giants and got to scuba dive in our largest exhibit, Ocean Voyager, with the whale sharks. This was an amazing experience! I had not been diving in about five years, so I was pretty nervous. Once I got in the water, my nerves went away. It was crazy swimming with 4 whales sharks. The hammerheads were a little frightening! The other divers and I also had some other special guests watching our dive. CNN came to film a segment about the dive program at the Aquarium. Yes, I was on national TV in my wet suit.... The Aquarium also had a swim program for those who were not scuba certified. I strongly recommend this opportunity to everyone- its amazing!!!

I continued working on my Meltwater project as well as set up an interview for a children's TV program, K2TVNews.

Another Week of New Adventures

Last week, I started a new assignment that has taken up a lot of my time. There is a program called Meltwater, which monitors when the Georgia Aquarium is mentioned in the media. I started an excel file with all these articles, so the Georgia Aquarium can track the number of times they are mentioned. I also print the articles out to keep on record.

I also helped with a media tour and swim for Frank Ski and guest. Frank Ski has a foundation to help kids in the local area. He brought a special high school guest to participate in our swim program "Journey with Gentle Giants". A camera man from 11 Alive came to film a segment about the foundation. I stayed with the camera man while he filmed Frank and his guest swimming with whale sharks.

On Wednesday, other girls in the PR/New Media department and I looked at possible intern candidates for the summer. More than 80 people applied. Viewing other people's resumes and cover letters definitely helped me with my own. There were a few applicants who had misspelled words- a big mistake! Other applicants had great cover letters that were tailored to the position they were applying for. Ashley, one of my bosses, did a great job of showing the other intern and I why cover letters and resumes were good or bad.

Friday, we had a special guest. I met Tony, one of the previous interns at the Aquarium. I had heard so much about him, so I was glad I finally got to meet him. He just got an internship in New York. Hopefully I will be up there with him soon!

New Exhibit

This week, I was given many small projects to work on. An editor at Ferguson Publishing Company is currently working on a book, which describes animal-related careers and features interviews with professionals working in the field. The editor wanted to interview a curator, aquarist and an aquarium director for his book, so I was in charge of arranging these interviews. I also researched other large aquariums and compared their ticket prices to the Georgia Aquariums. I also worked on our Web site. We have decided add a celebrity page to our Web site, which will showcase different celebrities who have been to the Aquarium. I had to find places on the Web site where we could link the celebrity page. Here is the link to the celebrity page, which includes Jordin Sparks, Usher, Martha Stewart and many more: http://test.georgiaaquarium.org/celebrities/.

We also opened a new exhibit last week. We partnered with GEICO and now have six Geckos located in the atrium. We announced the new exhibit to media on Tuesday. We also pitched to media in the Atlanta area an event we hosted Tuesday evening where Mayor Franklin presented a Phoenix award to GEICO. On Wednesday, a reporter from the AJC came to shoot some photos of the new Geckos. I took the lead on showing him around the new exhibit.

"Get Married", a television show on Lifetime Network, also came to film a segment about weddings at the Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium has an event facility that is perfect for weddings. "Get Married" filmed the facility as well as an interview with Will Ramsey, the director of group sales.

Martha Stewart Show

I should also mention that the Martha Stewart Show aired footage from the book signing and animal feeds at the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday, March 5. You should definitely check it out if you missed it. I was actually on the show!! You would have no idea it was me, but I was the girl walking across the large window by myself. It was dark but at least I was on TV.

Returning to Work

I know it has been a while since my last post, but I was down in Mexico enjoying the sun. Last week was Spring Break, so it was very hard to come back to work today from a great vacation.

Two weeks ago I spent most of the week updating a press release for the extension of yoga at the Georgia Aquarium. The other intern and I also created a media alert as well as found contact information for editors at numerous yoga and health magazine and/or Web sites. I missed out on pitching to these editors because I was away on spring break.

I did, however, pitch our summer camp to some family/parent magazines and Web sites. I was hoping these outlets would talk about our summer camp in their magazines or would place information on their online calendar. I'm currently following up with each outlet to see how my pitching went!!!

I should also mention that when I was flying to Mexico on Air Tran, I read the magazine provided to the passengers. The Air Tran magazine had two mentions of the Georgia Aquarium. Air Tran is having a contest with the Aquarium to see who can guess the number of fish we added to our Tropical Diver exhibit. The winner receives a free trip to Cancun provided by Air Tran. Ilya Kovalchuk and Kari Lehtonen, two Atlanta Trashers players, also mentioned the Georgia Aquarium. They said we were one of their favorite places in Atlanta. The Georgia Aquarium follows me where ever I go!! I was excited to see this great coverage for us, so I brought home a copy for work.

Snowed In

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to update my blog. As some of you may know, Athens, Georgia received six inches of snow on Sunday, and the storm caused most of Athens to lose Internet and cable. This was quite a surprise. I could not come to work on Monday because my car was snowed in.

In one of my previous post, I mentioned that we released two new animals in the Aquarium. I can finally tell you that these animals are great hammerheads sharks. We now have the largest collection of great hammerheads sharks anywhere in North America! Last week, we drafted a press release for the announcement and pitched it to the media.

Last week, I also helped with two media shoots. On Wednesday, we had a life shoot with CBS featuring our new yoga program. I had never participated in a life shoot before. I had to be at the aquarium at 4:30 in the morning. We had over 4 hits on CBS, and I even was even on the news- but only in the background. I also did a shoot with a guy from the ACC basketball tournament. The tournament will take place in Atlanta next month. The ACC took shots of the Aquarium, which they will use to create videos that will play on the scoreboards during the game.