Saturday, October 5, 2013

Application Updates

Since my last post I have interviewed with the specific departments for my PI applications!!

I interviewed with the Animal Programs department for the Conservation Education Presenter, Coordinator, and Instructor positions. This was by far the most nerve wrecking phone interview I have done. It was a panel interview for all 3 positions so I was on the phone with 5 different people. Fortunately, I was prepared for their questions ahead of time thanks to a blog I had read (click here) which gave all the possible questions. The one not listed that I had to prepare was "If you had to choose one conservation message that is very close to your heart, what would it be and how would you spread it?" Overall though, I felt good about it because I was so prepared. Hopefully the blog will help anyone out applying in the future because it definitely helped me. I'm not sure I would have gotten through it without it!

I also had an interview (if that's what you want to call it) with the person who runs the Disney Youth Events program. The reason why I'm hesitant to call it an interview is because it felt more like a discussion about the internship and was very informal. He gave me a detailed description of the internship what I'd be doing, what the daily schedule would be like, how many hours I'd be working. It was very informative and he asked me the basic interview questions about my background in music, have I ever planned an event (even if it was just a trip), and who my favorite character was ( I said Steamboat Willie which led into him telling me about Disney's new old style cartoons they're coming out with haha.) It lasted about 45 minutes and felt like more of a really relaxed conversation.

Finally I made and submitted my video audition for the Youth Education Series Facilitator internship. I did it with my cousins who are in 4th grade. I'm a little worried about it because I did some editing and its kind of noticeable but I had to cut out the long pauses or extra footage since I had about 12 minutes of video and had to fit it into 5 minutes. Hopefully that won't affect their decision though because this is definitely my top choice for a PI. Here's my video teaching a musical scale:



Finally, this happened last night.


 I'm not too upset because I'm still In Progress for every single one of the PIs I applied for and those are what I'm really aiming for this time around. Also with a teaching degree, I know I'll end up back in Florida no matter what happens with Disney! :)

Happy waiting!

Friday, September 6, 2013

Disney Round 2 (hopefully)

Someone just posted a link to this blog in the Spring 2014 College Program Facebook group as helpful interview info! :) I forgot all about it but now that I see it again I decided maybe I'll blog some more, especially now that I plan on going back to Florida/Disney.

I'm just going to give a brief overview of what I've been doing and maybe go into more details in other posts. I completed my Disney CP in January 2012 and had the best 7 months of my life. When I tell you it was hard leaving that place, I mean it was one of the hardest things I've had to do so far. I made so many amazing friends on my college program (all or most who have since returned to the sunshine state) and was extremely happy there. I did apply to extend and was accepted but ultimately decided not to take it and come back to school in CT.

I've been working on my certification and Master's degree in Elementary Education for the past year and a half (almost 2 years now! crazy) and I will finally be finished this December. So you know what that means? I'll be on my way back to the happiest place on earth come January of 2014!!

So far I have applied for 5 PI's (professional internships), all in the field of education. The roles I applied for are:

Alumni Only-Youth Education Series Facilitator (YES program)
Conservation Education Presenter
Conservation Education Coordinator
Conservation Education Instructor
Disney Youth Events Internship

I would honestly love any of these roles because they're all something I'm interested in, mostly teaching. However, the Youth Events Internship is actually working with the Music Festivals that the schools participate in which would also be a good fit for me since Music was my major in undergrad. I had my phone interview yesterday and I felt like it went really really well so now I'm just waiting, working on an audition video for the YES program, and crossing my fingers! I also applied for another CP yesterday as a backup in case I don't get a PI, passed my WBI (web based interview), and am having my phone interview this coming Tuesday at 5:45pm.

So basically I have a lot of exciting Disney related things happening and I can hopefully keep this blog running a little better than 2 years ago haha. My next posts will probably be about more magical memories from my first CP and then more detailed information about my PI interview and application process so far. So stay tuned!!