11 Nov Meet Senior Intern Avery Weiler
As one of our longest-serving interns, Avery Weiler has been a contributor to many of our flagship student-run business projects over the past two years. Having been promoted to Senior Intern in 2015, Avery recently guided a group of five students through their own internship experience at Rêve Academy. We sat down with him to learn more about what he has learned, and his plans for his future.
Avery, you have been with Rêve Academy for over two years—first as an intern, and now as a senior intern. Tell us more about yourself and your time at the Academy.
I am in my senior year of high school at FAIR School in Downtown Minneapolis. When I started my internship at Rêve Academy two years ago, I saw it as an opportunity to advance my high school major in graphic arts. At Rêve Academy, everybody has made me feel so welcome—it’s been more than an internship, it’s like home. It’s so different from school, where they just slap a paper in front of you and give you an assignment. Here, they want to interact with you and make sure you’re doing something that you actually like to be doing and that applies to what you want to do in the future. In fact, they even help you get to that future— for example, they recommend scholarships.
What are your plans for your future?
I have been finalizing my portfolio and have been applying to colleges. So far I’ve looked at New York, Milwaukee, and Chicago, and I am also interested in SCAD. I am looking all over the place, including overseas: France, London, Hongkong. Ever since I was a toddler I have been drawing and painting. In late 2012, I started video editing, and photo editing, and now I am trying to extend into coding, photography, videography. There is so much more to discover for me in college—I want to learn illustration, architecture, 3D modeling, and I also want to make clothing. There is endless knowledge, and you never stop learning. I am a very impatient person when it comes to learning, but I just have to deal with that, and know that I’ll get to where I want to be some day.
As an intern, which student-run businesses have you worked on at Rêve Academy?
When I started, I worked a little bit on the Fit’d clothing brand project, which was just getting wrapped up. On the side of that, I was working on the “Raiding a Diva’s Closet” initiative with the DIVA Project. We made brochures and business cards for them and we redid their logo. That was really fun to work on—I hadn’t really worked with marketing material before. Our next project was the Watch.MN website redesign. In my second year, we worked for Appetite For Change and Kindred Kitchen, and Mike and I became senior interns each tasked with leading a team. There were two teams: website redesign for Kindred Kitchen, where everybody learned coding to create the website, and even design a new logo. My team did the marketing materials for AFC: a revamped logo, business card, brochure and postcard. These materials needed to be updated to match up with their new website, which got redesigned by The Nerdery.
What did you learn over the course of this past summer?
I learned how to be a leader, because that’s not something that I usually do. I’ve led small groups with people from all over the world doing video editing, but they were never as collaborative and interactive. Being here kind of had soul, being in a space together and getting to know each other. You’re face-to-face and getting feedback.
Was there a challenging moment?
It wasn’t exactly a challenge, but it was probably getting everybody to get to know each other. It just took time. Every morning we’d do these fun games together, and then we asked interns to come up with their own games. That’s how we got to know each other as friends, not just co-workers.
It seems like you’ve always been really, really clear about your path—you’re really lucky! But looking back at your two years at Rêve, how would you say it has influenced your future? How have you evolved as a person thanks to your work here?
It’s definitely made me become a more social person. I used to only socialize with my friends at my school, but now I feel like I can read people, and I don’t mind talking to them. Now, being a leader, I know what to do. The Rêve Academy team really pushed us to be more of guidance to other people. I’ll definitely bring that wherever I’ll go and use it towards what I want to do in the future, because it will definitely get me further, and hopefully it will get other people further as well.
Thank you, Avery!