Internship and Entrepreneurship Class: Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work

Sessions Staff
Staff writer

Somebody famous once said: “If you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Most creative pros are attracted to the field by the desire to do the kind of work that (to them) doesn’t feel like work.

When you’re just starting out, however, it can be a real challenge to “get your foot in the door.” How do you get the first opportunity with an employer when your resume is light on experience outside of college?

In the Sessions College BFA program, one solution is an Internship and Entrepreneurship class that aims to provide students with meaningful work experiences during the program — and equip them for future careers.

In the class, developed by Academic Dean Dr. Meryl Epstein, students can choose various to gain professional experience, either by securing an internship with a local client employer, working on site or remotely, or by engaging with a freelance client.

Explains Dr. Epstein: “Because the class was developed in 2022 during the COVID pandemic, it was important to provide both in-person and remote options for gaining work experience. In today’s increasingly online environment, it’s important for students to gain proficiency and confidence working with clients in multiple ways.”

Since the Internship/Entrepreneurship class first launched, scores of students used the opportunity to gain essential career skills. In this article, we asked three senior BFA students to share their experiences:

Managing My Own Agency – Konstantinos Marmaridis

As an international student, I used this course to develop my work experience in the real operations of my own creative agency, Creative Masters.

From week to week, I was fully immersed in the responsibilities, pressures, and growth opportunities of running an active business in the Greek market. Over the past semester, I managed several major clients, including Μαρμαρίδης, Gili Concept, Medusa Ultimate, and my mother’s interior design brand, which achieved a social media presence of nearly 50k followers on Instagram, 20k on TikTok, and a total of 7,000,000 views within ten months.

Each project brought different expectations and challenges, allowing me to reflect not only on my creative process but also on my leadership and entrepreneurial development.

My responsibilities varied widely from project to project. As a creative director and agency owner, I oversaw branding, web design, social media strategy, video production, campaign planning, and client communication. Although I collaborate with a skilled team that supports the creative execution, every deliverable passes through me for direction, refinement, and approval.

For this reason, about 40% of my work this semester was purely creative, while the remaining 60% centered around strategy, management, business operations, and client relations. This balance helped me develop a strong understanding of how creativity and entrepreneurship coexist in real-world practice.

Through this experience, I learned how important communication, expectation-setting, and consistency are in a professional context. Leading an agency requires balancing creativity with business strategy while maintaining strong relationships. This course helped me reflect on these responsibilities and understand how much I’ve grown. At the moment, I already have three new clients waiting for upcoming meetings, and I plan to continue developing my agency with even more focus and ambition. This semester confirmed that entrepreneurship is not just a temporary path for me—it is the direction I want to pursue long-term.

Design Campaign for a Rock Band – Maggie Brownstone

In this class, my primary project focused on developing a full visual design campaign for the independent jam band Lazy Otter.

What began as a pro bono collaboration quickly became a practical case study in creative entrepreneurship, requiring me to balance illustration, branding, and poster design with the realities of client communication, project management, and production workflows.

The project began with an initial client meeting with the band’s point person, Austin. I treated this meeting as both a needs assessment and a creative consultation, preparing questions that would help me understand the band’s identity, tone, and goals. Lazy Otter described their sound as “jammy, rocky, and indie,” with an easygoing, playful energy. After looking through visual references together, we established a shared direction: something relaxed, vibrant, and fun—fitting for a band with a name like Lazy Otter. By the end of the conversation, we agreed that I would produce five preliminary sketches for three final illustrations, along with font and color mockups to explore potential poster and merchandise applications.

The feedback process was one of the most valuable parts of the experience. The band selected their preferred sketches and visual elements and offered thoughtful revisions, including replacing a keyboard with a gramophone to better reflect their actual instrumentation. This exchange reinforced how essential active listening, adaptability, and collaborative problem-solving are in professional creative work. Austin and another band mate Ryan also began sending additional references for potential logo treatments, which opened the door to further brand development.

As the semester progressed, I moved into finalizing the designs. I delivered three fully inked color illustrations, along with initial t-shirt and poster mockups—I also provided a few variants of a logo design that they have since used for stickers and t-shirts. This stage required balancing creative artistry with organizational skills—roughly a 60/40 split.

Most recently the band requested a specific poster design for a show, which led to navigating some more practical challenges, such as tight turnaround times and the technical complications of converting RGB artwork into CMYK for print without losing vibrancy. These hurdles taught me that production knowledge is as important as creative skill when delivering work intended for both digital and physical formats.

Reflecting on the experience, I’ve learned that strong creative outcomes rely just as much on professionalism as on artistic ability. Meeting deadlines, communicating clearly, presenting work effectively, and responding to feedback were just as crucial as sketching or coloring. This project deepened my understanding of how creativity intersects with entrepreneurship, and it gave me first-hand experience in sustaining a collaborative, organized, and adaptable design practice.

Concept Art for an Independent Movie – Haley Delgiacco

My project in this class was to develop concept art for an independent movie. The movie was conceived by Preston Blake, the owner and founder of Area Forge Productions, a small business that focuses on the creation and production of short independent films, based in Lancaster City, Pennsylvania.

Preston Blake wanted to develop visual ideas for The Pendulum, a supernatural thriller focused on retired special operative agent John Rivers. After hopes of living the quiet life are dashed by a series of near-fatal events that plague him, Rivers discovers he has been marked by one of the Four Horsemen: Death. Preston expected me to create a mood and tone for the story, create a concept design series for two of the show’s main characters, and define setting elements within the film.

This job was 70% creativity and 30% communication and debriefing. It took some time to get the script finalized at the beginning, as well as the end product: this shifted from a short film to a full length production so it’s able to hopefully compete at a film festival next year.

I was able to use the program ProCreate for these drawings, which I am extremely familiar with and had no trouble using. I am less familiar with the cartoon/comic book style of drawing that this project required, as well as the dynamic anatomical poses that I chose for each scene. To combat this, I utilized a program where I can manipulate a human model as well as different perspectives to create the poses I needed for reference images.

The feedback I received was great! Overall, Preston was very impressed and satisfied with the work I provided and has asked to keep me on the project moving forward to continue world-building and potentially create promotional material/advertising components. I may also assist with promotional material for kickstarter and advertising posters/flyers.

I have always enjoyed concept art and have done some work in that area before, but nothing this extensive before. I hope it will allow me to showcase a different area of my skillset through this multi-faceted project, as it will require organization, time management, diligence, and discipline to be added to my portfolio.

To find more about the Internship and Entrepreneurship class or our BFA programs, visit our Bachelor’s degree programs. Talk to our friendly Admissions team about Degree Program Admissions.