Link Internship
Introduction:
LINK is a fantastic program where Animas High School Junior students go into a three-week internship, based on career interest. Juniors do not go to school Mondays thru Fridays. Instead, they work at what they have chosen for there internships. This helps students be more professional and has a closer look at what it means to be an everyday adult. I interned at the Center of Southwest Studies at FortLewis College. They are an art museum of Native American arts and other small artifacts surrounding Native Americans. Currently, they have three exhibits at the museum. The Treasures of Southwest exhibit, the Cannabis exhibit, and the Ben (Night Horse) Campbell exhibit. |
Anticipation and Preparation
Janae is the Internship Coordinator and if you schedule a meeting with her and tell her what your interest is, then she will show you some emails, website links, and other cool stuff to help turn the wheels for your internship. When Janae told me about Center Southwest Studies and showed me the link, I asked for the email of the person in charge and I got Elizabeth Quinn's email. I emailed Elizabeth and she told me of all the stuff that would happen at the museum at the time and then we met face to face so we don't just meet on my first day of internship. Overall I would say it was really easy for me to find an internship and I think that's due partly of the fact that the Center of Southwest studies is a small museum and finding an internship at a big museum would be more difficult.
Janae is the Internship Coordinator and if you schedule a meeting with her and tell her what your interest is, then she will show you some emails, website links, and other cool stuff to help turn the wheels for your internship. When Janae told me about Center Southwest Studies and showed me the link, I asked for the email of the person in charge and I got Elizabeth Quinn's email. I emailed Elizabeth and she told me of all the stuff that would happen at the museum at the time and then we met face to face so we don't just meet on my first day of internship. Overall I would say it was really easy for me to find an internship and I think that's due partly of the fact that the Center of Southwest studies is a small museum and finding an internship at a big museum would be more difficult.
Ever since I started learning to read, I've picked up history books and looked at the pictures and practiced reading. When I went to my first museum I then started to touch history. I chose that opportunity because I partly wanted to complete that feeling of touching history.
What I hoped to gain from this experience is professionalism. I want to learn a balance between being goofy and professionalism. What I hoped to bring to the museum was a good attitude with a sense of humor. Going to my mentor and asking what are we doing today, or talking about how I should be organized better with a little bit of sarcasm. I had a lot of fun at my internship and I hope I left a mark of what I've done even though in comparison it's pretty small compared to whole exhibitions. |
My LINK Project:
My Project was taking care of 400-500 paintings of Nawkot tribe. The Nawkot tribe is from Vancouver and most these paintings told stories of people and/or their tribe or sometimes they would just have local animals. Some of these stories where myths and they very interesting to see. My job was to take pictures of them with there museum number to keep track of where they go and then document where they are going to be storage. |
Reflection:
When I first came to Link I felt that communication was the greatest skill I could bring. For example, I had to call my mentor a couple of times because I was sick or I'm going to be late. Also telling my mentor that I'm a visual and hand by hand learner. Later in my internship, I had a hard time keeping organized for the museum, I would leave big messes behind or see a big mess and think that there more important things to handle. My mentor would yell at me that wasn't okay and I eventually learned how to keep organized.
I think I contributed to the museum by cleaning and reorganizing at the museum and helping the museum get ready for the summer. At the time when I was working there a lot of college students that worked at the museum have graduated or have left for the summer and they left huge messes behind. And I think that the Center of Southwest studies should have more animas students as interns to not only learn how to organized but to also learn history.
I think that my internship has helped a lot in organization and time management. Overall my organization has helped because I can work for long periods of time depending on what the subject is and I get lots of breaks. I've learned more time management to keep track of one project and at times when I need to do something different, do smaller projects.
When I first came to Link I felt that communication was the greatest skill I could bring. For example, I had to call my mentor a couple of times because I was sick or I'm going to be late. Also telling my mentor that I'm a visual and hand by hand learner. Later in my internship, I had a hard time keeping organized for the museum, I would leave big messes behind or see a big mess and think that there more important things to handle. My mentor would yell at me that wasn't okay and I eventually learned how to keep organized.
I think I contributed to the museum by cleaning and reorganizing at the museum and helping the museum get ready for the summer. At the time when I was working there a lot of college students that worked at the museum have graduated or have left for the summer and they left huge messes behind. And I think that the Center of Southwest studies should have more animas students as interns to not only learn how to organized but to also learn history.
I think that my internship has helped a lot in organization and time management. Overall my organization has helped because I can work for long periods of time depending on what the subject is and I get lots of breaks. I've learned more time management to keep track of one project and at times when I need to do something different, do smaller projects.