It ain’t easy making a career change at 37, and it can be especially daunting to be a 37-year-old intern in a completely new field, but coming to intern at de Novo has been spectacular. After being a high school English teacher for over a decade, I came to de Novo with a wild notion that I wanted to learn digital marketing.
I studied and studied before I got to de Novo, but nothing fully prepares one for running real digital campaigns for clients. My (now) friends at de Novo, were extremely generous in throwing me real life tasks for real life clients, but always being there to help me learn and cover my backside when I screwed up. More often than I want to admit, handing me authentic tasks took my coworkers more time and energy than just doing it themselves, but they continued to help me learn and continued giving me tasks.
Along with the generosity of everyone at de Novo, there was always a pervasive feeling of humility. One of the ways this often showed itself was through de Novo’s “creative collective.” It’s always tricky brainstorming and putting your ideas out there for the group but doing this is one of the most inspiring things I got to do at de Novo. de Novians truly care about each other and also love ideas. The balance of being humble and generous with each other, but also working diligently to produce the best product for our clients is one of the things de Novo does best. 
It’s kind of strange to get to work with people that you genuinely enjoy being around, on projects that you genuinely find interesting, but that’s what I got at de Novo. There’s room for crazy ideas and off-color jokes and hard work and being your (weird) self. God bless each and every one of these weirdos that put up with a bumbling, 37-year-old weirdo that decided he was going to change careers and ended up interning at de Novo.
Like this post? Keep going down the rabbit hole with these similar reads:
A Summer Through the Eyes of a Front Desk Girl – Get more insights on de Novo from our summer intern.
Is the Open Office Format Bad? – There’s been a lot of discussion about the open office format and whether it’s good or bad. Jen weighs in on the debate.
Both a Mentor and a Mentee Be – Mentoring and being mentored is something that we talk about a lot, but how does one go about finding a mentor and why?
