internship update

I've been interning at redpepper for about a month now and it's been a good learning experience thus far for various reasons.
Probably the biggest thing I have struggled with is the feeling that I just don't know enough. I have been racked with the fear that I should be further along in my education at this point. For example, I should know how to use InDesign, one of the programs in the Adobe Creative Suite. I will skip the rant on why I did not learn it and just say I wasn't taught in the class I should have been taught in. So in the last week I was given an assignment to do in InDesign and I figured I had played with it enough to figure it out. Unfortunately I still didn't know enough of the basics and ended up staying super late at the office to complete it. I felt awful when my creative director looked at the project because I knew it wasn't up to par.
That night, I went home and did tutorials on InDesign.
Instead of feeling frustated like I have been for awhile, I finally snapped out of it and remembered that if I want to learn the program, that I need to go and do it. Sure it stinks that I wasn't taught, but I can be taught, and I can teach myself.
So the next day I went back to redpepper feeling confident and had a great day. I sat in on a few big brainstorming sessions and had a great time. I felt comfortable and spoke up when I had ideas. I even stayed late on my own choosing. I am determined to make this a good experience.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned thus far is that this is a learning experience. I am an intern and they don't think I can do everything. So I need to treat myself gracefully. And thank goodness this is an internship. I really would get a slap in the face if it were a real job and I couldn't perform. So now I will have a better idea of how a creative firm works and how I need to think and create as a part of it.
As soon as I snapped out of my frustration from my internship last week, it also lifted off the funk I'd been feeling at school. I felt motivated and inspired, and I plan to take that into the coming week as well.

I suggest to any student, at Watkins and elsewhere, to get an internship if possible. You can't learn everything at school. To really know how the industry works, you have to be immersed in it.