My senior year of high school I was accepted into a mentorship program called ProPEL (Providing Professional Experiences for Life). ProPEL is an all year program that gives seniors the opportunity to learn more and get some experience in a career that they are interested to pursue. I did my mentorship at Anna Berglin Design. Anna Berglin Design is a small interior design company located in St. Louis Park, MN. I worked under the direction of the very talented Anna Berglin, head designer of her own company. ​

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Beginning in January until May, I worked along side Anna four hours per week learning what a real interior designer does day to day. It was fascinating to see Anna at work and to learn more about the industry. I was able to sit in on meetings between realtors, clients, and remodelers. We went to tile, stone, and hardware showrooms and I even went to a client home and got to see the space that Anna is redesigning. It was so interesting to hear current projects that Anna was working on each week and seeing the progress and outcomes of each space.

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Each week I went excited to spend time with Anna and see what new thing I would be doing that day. As time went on, Anna did give me more responsibility by letting me work on my own and giving me tasks to do that otherwise she would have had to do herself. I loved the creative, positive, and upbeat environment. There was something new to see or learn each time.

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Before beginning my mentorship, I had a few goals in mind that I really wanted to accomplish before the end of the school year. The big, main goal was to experience what it is like to be a designer by working on my own project. If I decided to go into the industry, I wanted to get an idea to what it is like to design for a client. Also, in general I wanted to learn more about how projects work. For instance, how long they take, who is involved, and the communication between client and designer were all questions in my head. Lastly, I wanted to learn about the programs/software and overall materials that they used on a daily basis. All in all, I wanted to really get the most out of this spectacular experience.

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{Take a peek at my journal to get an in-depth look into the week to week activities I experienced.} 

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