this is what summer looks like

in two days i move away from my amazing little home in Portland, away from Ben, Chad and Jeff, back to Seattle. I am excited for the new school year to start, but I can't help but be pretty sad to say farewell to such a lovely summer.

to paraphrase my summer; it was fantastic. allow me to show you.

this is what summer looks like -

this is what summer looks like from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

Allow me to clarify

I have not graduated from college. Yup, I was Just Kidding.

So, I graduated. I just didn't graduate. I walked, I had the tassel, I threw the hat, I ate the cake -- I'm just not done with classes yet. I know, it sounds silly, but really there is a logical explanation for my bogus pomp and circumstance.

As you may remember I traveled abroad to India during the fall quarter of this last year. Taking this quarter off meant that I was deferring a quarter of my Sullivan Scholarship, a scholarship group that I am a part of at Seattle University (more on this amazing program later in this blog post). In all its pre-meditated glory, the Sullivan allows its recipients to use essentially 4 years of schooling as they see fit, in whatever chunks and sequence that works for them. For me, this meant that I could take fall quarter off last year and roll over that scholarship money to this year. And, wallll AHH! I am returning to SU for a 5th year fall quarter to take my one last marketing elective class.

Now, you may be asking why oh why would I return for just one class. The answer goes a bit beyond the simple, "Well, in case you didn't notice this isn't the best economy to be joining the work force." My reasoning for returning to SU for one more quarter is much more rooted in the core beliefs and values of the Sullivan program. The Sullivan was created to foster better, holistic leadership in young college students. We work on things like group facilitation, community engagement and general mental well-being. It's the latter of those qualities that has to do with why I'm staying around for a 5th year. I realized I needed a buffer before I had to make decisions about the bigger world outside of SU and Capitol Hill. I'm a firm believer in buffers. With both the monetary and community support of the Sullivan, I now have the time to relax for three months, post-COLAB and pre-world. I'm really looking forward to taking time to enjoy my last class, Entrepreneurial Marketing, having time with a few good friends that are still in the Seattle area and simply reflecting on decisions. In all honesty, those things are likely going to be accomplished by way of sitting in the Quad and going on long bike rides to Ballard. I don't have any big plans for the quarter and I'm really, really looking forward to that.

So, apologies if I confused you with that whole cap and gown thing before. I wanted the pictures to show the grand kiddies some day, you know? It was fake-it or forget-it. And really, in the end, I realized that the ceremony wasn't all a big hoax for me. It felt as though I was celebrating the end of my true college years; the hoopla was to bid farewell to all my good friends and all the amazing memories I made during my four years at SU. In my mind, I'm returning to campus this Sunday not to really go back to school, but rather to relish in the campus life one last time. Say goodbye to it all in a real long, cozy way.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Below are some pictures from this summer's Sullivan Retreat on the Oregon Coast where we talk about our ups and downs, learn to relax better, practice Tai Chi and dance to bad pop music. More pictures can be viewed on my Flickr account.

COLAB, Over and Out

About a month out from the COLABORATORY grand finale and I finally feel like my thoughts are cohesive enough to write a blog post in review. Excuse my tardiness, but this beast of an intern program is not so easily summed up in one quick post.

The final blowout event of the COLAB program was the team presentations to Columbia Sportswear. The day was something I never imagined myself having the opportunity to partake in at such a young age in my career. The act of pitching our campaign to Columbia, a prominent corporate brand, is alone an amazing thing to have lived to tell about. I think what was most nerve racking for me was not necessarily the Columbia judging panel, but more so the 20 or so COLAB committee members sitting behind the judges. These COLAB folks are the real deal, the professionals that do these sorts of pitches for a living, our bosses from the last six weeks and not to mention the people we all might someday want to work for if we stay in this industry. There was pressure. For sure.

Photo By Erin Davis / Columbia Sportswear judges.

I think our team really found a lot of motivation in that pressure though, or at least I think I can say so for myself. Getting up in front of that room and spilling out on the table the amazing work Wet Paint did was a total rush. It was not so much about "selling it to client" like I had assumed it would be. Once we got up there and got rolling with our pitch the whole thing turned into this sort of enthusiastic show and tell. We were simply showing off this baby we had made, this adorable little bundle of joy all rolled up into one neat package that we called a campaign. Our group really made fantastic work -- we all were so proud of it which made the pitch just seem like the fun part. All we had to do was show Columbia how much we loved our stuff and how much we believed in it and the rest just happened. The rest being the part where Columbia deliberated for two hours to decide which team's campaign would be named the winner.

From the sound of it the other group, Silo5, had a great campaign as well. We didn't actually get to watch their pitch, as is the nature of agency pitches in the real world. Once it was deliberation time the two groups finally, finally reemerged from our absurd six weeks of head-to-head competition and got to tour the Columbia Sportswear campus as a cohesive group of 10 smiling, not stressed-out interns. The results were out of our hands; we could finally relax. During the break we got to meet Mrs. Gert Boyle herself! Such a cool lady. It was so great to see her in person after all those years knowing her as the Tough Mom from the Columbia ad campaigns.

Photo By Erin Davis / Meeting Mrs. Boyle.

When we returned to hear the panel's final vote, we were greeted with a ton of fantastic feedback which again was something I think none of us interns would have imagined having the experience of at such a young age. Immediate, relevant, thoughtful critiques from a real client -- those 15 minutes were likely one of the most pertinent payoffs of the COLAB experience. In the end Columbia chose our team's campaign as the winner. They had a lot of specifics to say about positives and negatives of campaign as well as some good, broad tips for us. I can't give you, my dear blog readers, too many specifics though. Sorry! Both team's ideas are now full property of Columbia, so we've got some super confidential insider info on our hands. This is good news for us though because if all goes well in the next stages of Columbia's ad planning, we very well could be seeing some of Wet Paint's ideas in full swing next Fall. So. Exciting!

In the meantime, I can show you some very basic pictures of the very awesome book Wet Paint designed for our pitch to give to Columbia as a takeaway. Consider this a teaser/valid proof that we had as much fun with this project as I had been alluding to in my blog all summer.

More pictures of our book in detail can be viewed on my Flickr account.

The long, last day of COLAB was polished off with a lovely after-party filled with beer, snacks, awkward bonding and Voodoo Doughnuts.

Photo By Erin Davis / Awkward team bonding at the after party.

Overall, I can't imagine having spent my summer in any other way. COLAB was an amazing opportunity, albeit experimental and nontraditional. If you are a prospective intern reading this blog (because I know there will be some, as the 10 of us 2009 Lab Rats sure did our fair share of Googling prior to applying), I'd say apply if you think you are adventurous enough and thick-skinned enough to survive an internship of such abnormal nature. It was rapid fire, for sure. We had to be on our toes enough to handle three first days of work, three sets of bosses to impress and three sets of office responsibilities. And on top of all that there came the extra time needed to devote to the Columbia campaign work. After a 9-5 day you'd usually have another three hours of work or so to do on your own time for your team. It is a big time commitment, but with that said, it comes with big payoffs. The amount of experience we all gained in six weeks far surpasses a traditional internship in my opinion and the number of contacts you make during the course of the program is unreal. I have a stack of business cards on my desk that would make any unemployed college grad drool. So, apply if you think you can make the time/energy commitment and know that if you are willing to go all out during the six weeks, the experiences will be a huge reward.

I'm now venturing off into the seemingly "real world" knowing that I do feel intrigued and inspired by this sort of industry. Where I will fall within the mix of advertising/marketing/graphic design I do not know. Through COLAB I think I came to realize that for me the allure of being a project manager in some facet of this industry is rooted in my love for the process. The late night work session with Wet Paint where some one would get an idea which would make another person sit up in their chair and go, "Oh, oh, OH!" Which would in turn cause everyone to start scribbling away in their journals... that is what I really enjoyed. And then the mass translation of all those good ideas into one cohesive pretty package; that's where the good stuff is at. That is what I can see myself doing for a career. Now to just figure out how I want to make that happen... More on big life decisions in another blog post. This one is already proving to be far too epically long.

Thank you a million times over to the Portland Advertising Federation and the awesome COLAB Committee for being adventurous enough to create this weird program and for choosing me to be a part of the second round of Lab Rats. I look forward to watching where this program takes itself and the great things you all will do to help it get there. And of course, thank you so much to Ascentium, Grady Britton and Anvil Media for letting me sneak into your agencies. I learned so much from everyone on your teams; too many great people to name. Apologies for the many questions, drinking a lot of your coffee and building robots in highly trafficked areas. And most importantly, thank you to Jimmy, Jenny, Erin and Lincoln, the most AMAZING intern agency team a girl could have asked for. I was continually impressed with your guys' ability to produce fantastic content all while sitting in my un-airconditioned house. Well done, Wet Paint. Seriously, well done. I miss you all already and hope some day we all can sit in a room again and laugh uncontrollably at absolutely nothing. I really do.