MEET ELLA SANDS
Age: 22
Hometown: Woodbury, MN
Work-Based-Learning Internship: The Amazeum

MY BACK STORY
I grew up in Minnesota, in a suburb of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. I was definitely always a creative person. I love art, and I was in theater for most of my life too, which was really fun. I was also a skier and in the martial arts—I have a Black Belt in karate. But because I was always involved in a multitude of hobbies, it was a little hard for me to land on what I wanted to do in the future. I always knew I wanted to bring out my creativity in my career, but it was a matter of figuring out what route would fit best.

Karate was an interesting learning experience. I had tried a couple different sports, such as soccer, but they just weren’t my thing. So when I was 7, my dad, who had been in karate when he was younger, threw me and my brother into it and I was the one who actually really liked it. I’ve always been a very independent person, and karate was all you. In my school, which was National Karate, you had to focus on the four major principles of commitment, perseverance, determination, and then achievement. And the cycle between each belt was kind of like that. I earned my Black Belt right before starting high school, and that process definitely taught me a lot of important principals—especially as a young girl with that as my sport.

My family moved to Oklahoma before my junior year of high school, and COVID hit just months after that, so really bad timing. Just as I was making friends, COVID appears and it’s “Okay, forget about that.” But it was in Oklahoma that I got a lot more into the creative side of myself. As I grew older and started thinking about college and what I was going to study, I was like, “Wait, I can bring my creativity into what I want to do.” That eventually led me to the idea of majoring in graphic design, which sounded really awesome to me.

MY EDUCATION
Finishing high school in Oklahoma, I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college. “Do I go back to Minnesota…or somewhere else?” Originally, my dream school was Arizona State, just because it was so cool and different compared to Minnesota. But I decided I didn’t want to be a plane ride away from Oklahoma and Minnesota. So I had a friend named Zariah—my one friend from high school—and she was going to the University of Arkansas. “You should check it out,” she said. “I don’t know anybody there either, and we can be roommates.” I had an image in my head of Arkansas being like Oklahoma State, really country and nothing at all like me. But then I went to visit and I was like, This is really cool. I think that’s what a lot of people say when they come to NWA from somewhere else—that it’s a hidden gem.

So that’s where I went. And I ended up having the very definition of an awesome college experience. I rushed a sorority, Phi Mu, so I had the Greek life as well. I met all of my best friends at U of A, and I feel like something switched inside me, where I was like, Oh wait, I’m a person and I like what I’m going to do, and I have great friends. I don’t know, I just turned on in a way that makes me feel very myself.

When I got to Fayetteville, I figured out a way to get an art major with a marketing minor, so I got to dabble in the business side of things too, which was really fun. My counselor helped me land on that decision, along with my parents, because my dad’s big in business and I always wanted that side of things too. To have that success and opportunity for growth. I didn’t really know what to expect class-wise when I picked art as my major, and I was blown away. The University of Arkansas has an amazing art program, so I got to do so many cool things. I took everything from screen printing to animation, to sculpture, to painting, to drawing. I got to take color theory. I was in a class called Time in Motion, which taught us about different video programs. They did so many different things.

And I loved getting my foot in every one of those doors, so to speak. I was never someone who wanted to be an “artist artist.” I just didn’t see myself doing that long-term. But there were a lot of people there who were doing that, plus people who were going down the film route. I was a little more unique, being also involved in the business side of things. But I learned how to do animation, which I always wanted to dabble in, and I now know a lot of different software, which is cool. I got to make posters within screen printing and I got to have a film class and learn how to work these giant movie cameras. So I have a little experience in a lot of different things. And the staff were amazing. I had the best professors.

That curriculum gave me an opportunity to be creative with my art major and then do other things with my marketing minor. So when I was applying for jobs, it helped me be more versatile.

MY (HOPED-FOR) WORK LIFE
I got my degree on May 9, a little over three months ago. But for a long time before that, I was having my first experience with the real-world job market. I started submitting applications way back in September of 2024, and I really started grinding this past February. Because I had such a versatile major, I was applying from everything from an art director assistant to a full-on marketing assistant. But since I didn’t have any corporate marketing experience (I had mainly been freelancing, as well as serving on the PR team for my sorority), I didn’t think it would make sense for me to apply for a “position position” yet, especially in today’s market. So I was focusing on internships, and I was sending applications all over the country because I didn’t have a lot of time left.

MY TURNAROUND MOMENT
I think it was March when I started thinking, Maybe I can lock down on a spot around here and really go for it. One reason I shifted gears was that I knew I at least had my lease in Fayetteville until mid-July. So I began looking at things close by. And I remember exactly where I was when I applied to the Apprenticely posting. I was between classes at school and was sitting at one of the student common areas. I saw a job posting for a Digital Marketing internship and at first I thought it was for Apprenticely itself, because I didn’t really read it all. So I was busy working up my application and then I realized, Oh wait, it’s for the Amazeum, the Children’s Science Museum. I had heard of the Amazeum and I looked it up again and it sounded perfect for me. Growing up in Minnesota, I remember going to the Children’s Museum up there and loving it.

Then I got nervous. I had been applying for so many things, and who knew if I would even hear back on this one? But I sent off my application and about two days later got a call from Nichole Parsons at Apprenticely. She was really easy to talk to on our first phone interview and everything was really go-with-the-flow, which was nice. Then when I had my interview with my boss now, Holland, I could tell this was going to be a great fit. She was so cool, so down to earth, talking so normally, that again I wasn’t nervous.

Shortly after that, I was in class when Nicole let me know that I got the internship. It was a week before I was to graduate, and I was so relieved. It’s very stressful to not have something solid, because the job market is just crazy right now. So this was a big weight lifted off my shoulders. It made graduation even more fun instead of nervous.

MY INTERNSHIP
We have a graphic artist on our team, a marketing and communications coordinator, a website coordinator, and a senior marketing and communications coordinator. At first, I was kind of helping everybody. For the social media side, I was doing a lot of the photos of the different events that we do. There are so many events going on in the Amazeum! I was photographing the summer camps, and I got to deal with the kiddos, which was really fun. When I started back in May, our new exhibition was called “Roar and Explore,” and it was a big dinosaur exhibit. The kids loved that one.

Then for graphic design, I was doing a lot of random projects: “Oh, we need this flyer to go out next week and we need this thing to sit next to the cash register.” So I was doing a bunch of small graphics that was really cool to dabble in. I was just taking whatever they could give me, and the whole team was so good to work with. If I had any questions, any at all, I could ask them.

Every Tuesday, we have what we call the Marketing Jam, which is an hour and a half of “What do we have to talk about? What are we doing? What’s everyone doing this week?” That’s really helpful, because we all know what we’re doing all the time. There’s never any confusion, and I’m never lost, which is so nice, because especially when you’re in a professional scenario, you don’t want to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Our team is really good on communication, which benefits us all.

My internship is officially over on August 14. So by the time people read this interview, I’ll already be in my new fulltime position, which I’m thrilled about. Up until early July, I was just doing the social media and graphic projects that I talked about earlier. Then we learned that Kaley, our marketing and communications coordinator, was leaving. And I was asked to take over her position!

I’m actually doing a lot of it already. I’m doing Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the newsletter that goes out every week. I’m also handling a lot of the external and internal communication with people who want to coordinate social media posts and giveaways. I’m still getting the swing of the analytics, and I’m learning a lot about digital ads and Google Ads and how A.I. affects website visits, which is really interesting. For example, if you look something up online now, the A.I. overview gives you a kind of blurb—but that’s been affecting everyone else’s clicks. Nobody’s visiting their websites now, because people are just seeing what they need right in the A.I. overview. So you have to know what’s going on with A.I. today. You can’t pretend it’s not a factor anymore.

MY FUTURE GOALS
Even in my latter years of college, I knew I wanted a job in which I could be creative in some way. But that has to come with success. I don’t want to just be an artist, I want to be involved with business as well. One day, I want to work for myself, a dream my dad always told me was worth chasing. So that’s my long-term goal right now. It would be really cool to own my own design firm where people would hire me to create things. That sounds perfect to me.