Are you a student looking for experience? Do you value a collaborative work environment, feedback from supervisors, the chance to work on real-world projects and summers spent in toasty Charlotte, North Carolina?

If so, you’d probably relate to Wray Ward’s junior motion content creator, Kyra Arendt. In the winter of 2020, Kyra was a film production major at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and was searching for all of the above (well, maybe she didn’t know she wanted to spend her summer in North Carolina at the time) in her postgrad internship. After COVID-19 cut a previous advertising internship short, she relied heavily on solo freelance work to bolster her portfolio. However, coming out of college, Kyra still looked forward to gaining real-world experience and a taste of agency life. She knew she had found what she was searching for when she came across Wray Ward's FORM internship program.

Designed to give college students a crash course in agency life and work, FORM is a 10-week, highly competitive summer internship program. With nine positions available across all areas of expertise, students team up to solve real client challenges and become an integral part of the agency.

Back in 2020, Kyra knew she wanted to give agency life a shot but never imagined she’d turn her summer internship into a full-time role. Read on to get her rundown of the FORM internship, key takeaways and advice for future applicants.

Q: Describe your FORM application process and what kind of role you were searching for.

Over winter break of my senior year of college, I began scouring the web looking for what I wanted to do with my life after graduation. I was honestly willing to go anywhere that looked like a fun opportunity where I could learn a lot, and that’s how I perceived the FORM internship. From the beginning, Wray Ward seemed super engaging. I remember having a Zoom interview with my future supervisors and thinking that they were easy to talk to, which is something I hadn’t experienced in previous interviews.

Q: What was your initial impression as a new intern? Did that impression change over the course of the summer?

I was so excited after signing my letter of acceptance for the video intern position. I’m not sure how much of that excitement was for work and how much was just to get in-person experiences after a year of virtual everything, but either way, I was open to something new.

Our FORM team received a brief for our first collaborative project on day one of the program, and it was the first time I had ever even seen a brief. There was so much detailed information on that page that I thought everything we’d be asked to do would be as straightforward and prescriptive. However, throughout the summer, I learned that was not exactly the case, as folks at Wray Ward tend to encourage being inventive and breaking the rules.

Q: What was it like working with the seasoned professionals on the Motion team?

I was surprised by the amount of detail that went into almost everything my co-workers did. At the first shoot I attended, I watched my team adjust backlighting for 25 minutes and realized that there was a lot for me to learn.

My supervisor, Griffin, was especially helpful at showing me the ropes throughout the summer. She was always available to look over my work and provide feedback, pointing out areas for improvement that I hadn’t even noticed.

Q: FORM brings together students with passions and education in different fields. How would you describe the experience of working as a collaborative team with students whose talents are different from yours?

I think working with the FORM team was definitely something I needed after only really doing freelance work on my own for so long. Sitting in a room with my teammates to collaborate, I came up with ideas that I’m certain I could not have had on my own. In fact, I got a lot of the inspiration for the direction of my final client video from Ida, the graphic design intern. Her designs fed the animation style that I ultimately went with.