College to Career

Interning at Diva Crows songbird rehab has allowed me to build on the information I learned in class as a Conservation Biology major. In my earlier classes, we learned a little about Avian Biology and anatomy, and working with wild birds has increased this knowledge tenfold. I now have a deeper understanding of their digestive tract, bone, and musculature structure.

I have learned how to identify a broken or dislocated wing joint based on the feel and positioning of the wing and how the bird is holding it. I know how to safely give medications and food to birds without them aspirating. Although the life cycle of birds has not specifically been touched on in any of my courses, I’ve learned a lot about the earlier stages. I can tell a nestling bird from a hatchling from a fledgling.

Animal Behavior, a course I took this summer, has helped me better understand the reasoning behind certain behaviors seen in birds. For example, placing a towel or cloth over a bird’s cage or face can help calm it down due to how its nervous system reacts to the change in light. Sensory stimuli such as movement or sound can also cause baby birds to pop their heads up and open their mouths for food. I’ve personally used this to my advantage by opening and closing the incubator door to get a hatchling who isn’t eating to open its mouth. Understanding why or how behaviors are triggered by the nervous system is helpful when working with animals that tend to be very reactive, such as birds.

I believe that my time at Diva Crows will really help with my future jobs and classes.
I’m planning on taking an Ornithology class in the spring and a large part of the curriculum in Biology electives (such as Plant Biology, Ornithology, and Biology of Fishes) is identification and anatomy. After spending hours working with extremely loud juvenile northern flickers and pileated woodpeckers, I can confidently say I can identify their calls without needing any kind of guidebook. I should be set on common Virginia birds!

In terms of my career, I’d like to continue to work in wildlife rehabilitation as an intern and possibly as an employee, so having my supervisor as a reference will be really helpful for that. There’s no doubt that the skills I’ve learned working with wild birds over the past few months will help me out in my future classes and career, and I will definitely be coming back to Diva Crows to help out whenever I’m available.

Interning at the Youth Life Foundation of Richmond (YLFR) has brought up numerous topics that I have learned about previously as a psychology major. For example, one of the topics we discussed in one of my development classes was how learning can be different for each individual child.

The kids that I have been working with are from the ages of 6-10 years old, which encompasses middle to late childhood. These students are actually bilingual in Spanish and English, or are learning to speak English. Since most of them live with parents that speak do not speak English, it’s hard for them in the school system. In their school, there are no bilingual teachers or anyone to translate the information to these students.

What is great about working at this nonprofit is that the two full time teachers are bilingual and during the school year, in addition to what they are learning in school, these teachers are targeting where the kids are and working with them to improve.
As I learned in my psychology classes there are numerous reasons why a child may not be catching up with the rest of their class. Even the students who are fully bilingual, may still have trouble in their current grade level. I have loved this internship is because I am working with the kids on subjects they do not understand and working with them at their own pace. For example, one of the kids I was tutoring in reading has trouble with double vowel words, so instead of moving on to the next set of words, we were working with the same words as the week prior so he can get better at that skill at his own pace.

Another concept relating to school that when students feel supported in their school, their attitude is generally better. At the Foundation, a lot of the kids had a great attitude about learning reading and math for five weeks out of their summer. This is because they are supported by this nonprofit and are successful in this setting. Since the teachers at the Youth Life Foundation of Richmond work with them at their own pace and work toward their academic goals, they don’t feel stressed out about coming to the learning center and are actually excited to learn.

On the other hand, as many of them have fewer resources in their actual school system, it is harder for these kids to be supported in that environment, but with YLFR, they obtain some of the skills necessary to conquer public school.

When I began my internship at the start of the summer, I didn’t know what a typical day would look like while working at Huntley Meadows Park. Excitingly enough for me, there was no “typical day” in terms of the work we were doing at the park. Some days involved smaller tasks, like trail maintenance, spraying herbicide on invasives, or setting up exclusion fencing to prevent beavers and Canadian geese from destroying important native plant species. Other days I was doing something completely new, like going to a different Fairfax County Park and hand pulling water chestnuts (an invasive plant species in Virginia) in a lake while balanced precariously in a kayak.

Over the course of the summer, I aided in three larger projects at the park; a water quality analysis, a turtle population survey, and I got to put together a wetland plant identification guide. The water quality analysis was very interesting to participate in, because it involved not only collecting the samples in the field but also the identification and analysis of the sample. For our water quality survey, we looked at the different types of aquatic macroinvertebrates (aka insects in their larval stages as well as snails, shrimp, worms, etc.) found at different sites around the park, and after the samples were collected we had to begin the long task of identifying each specimen. We collected over 800 organisms and had only 2 microscopes, so needless to say it took a while to complete. After identifying all our macroinvertebrates we were then able to use that data to make a determination on how much organic pollution is in the water and compare that to previous years’ data.

The turtle population survey I was able to assist with was also a lot of fun to participate in. We were using a catch and release method, so each morning for about two weeks another intern and I went to 3 different locations and set up traps using canned sardines as bait. At the end of the day we went back to each trap and documented certain characteristics of each turtle we found, including sex, weight, and certain shell measurements before using a non-toxic paint pen to mark the ones we had already documented and releasing them back into the wetland. This was the first year a survey like this was conducted at the park, so I am excited to see how it will continue in the future.

One of the perks of my internship is the connections I’ve been able to make with professionals working with the Fairfax County Park Authority. Part of my internship involved occasionally getting “loaned out” to other Fairfax County parks to help with their ongoing invasive species management. The change of scenery was nice every once in a while, but the largest benefit I gained from those experiences was being able to talk with other park managers and park authority employees about their work and how they got into their positions. The advice I received from people working within my chosen field was extremely helpful when considering my future career.

To any other Eagle who is considering applying for an internship grant but may be intimidated at the prospect, I would whole heartedly encourage you to just go for it. Being able to complete my internship with this grant has enabled me to make the most of my internship with less of a financial burden weighing me down and I do not think I would have been able to take as much as I did from this experience otherwise. I am so grateful that I was given this opportunity and the knowledge and practical experience I have gained make me feel more prepared for my next stages in life.

Looking back, after having completed my internship with Downtown Greens as a Garden Education intern, the opportunity was one I could not have missed.

In the spring semester of 2022, I took an anthropology course with Professor Mentore here at UMW which was centered around the topic of the Age of the Anthropocene. A large portion of the course was focused on Permaculture design principles, which can be explained more simply as strategic sustainable agriculture designs. Professor Mentore had the class take a trip to Downtown Greens and analyze the locations and existence of water sources, wind patterns, human pathways, sun patterns, etc. I fell in love with the greenspace at Downtown Greens and knew I wanted to be more involved with the organization. I followed them on Instagram and learned that they were taking applications for various internship positions. I then applied to the Garden Education intern position due to my experience working with children. From there, the rest is history!

The internship experience with Downtown Greens helped me further believe that not only is outdoor time important for the development of children but the skills of gardening and being more aware of how to take care of our greenspaces are priceless. This is especially true during today when caring for our earth is becoming ever more important as climate change is real and testing how well, or poorly we are truly living in accordance with nature. I have had the chance to take multiple classes, most of which pertain to my major, Anthropology, which has been focused on ways to better take care of our planet. I found these very helpful to have under my belt as I commenced my internship at Downtown Greens. For example, I have taken an Amazonian societies course which focused on different Indigenous peoples who reside in the Amazon and their way of connecting with the earth in a way that is not as dangerously depleting as our capitalist American lifeway is. I mentioned the Anthropocene course earlier, this course was one where we talked about energy flow and how we can learn to better utilize and work with the natural flow of earth’s energy.

Thus, due to having taken courses on the betterment of the relationship between humans and nature, interning at Downtown Greens was a breath of fresh air. Meeting all the Downtown Greens staff and faculty was inspiring as they all are very passionate about their mission and what the garden stands for and means for the surrounding community. Upon saying my farewells, the Garden Educators at Downtown greens gifted me a lovely “see you later” card stating they hope to have my help with summer camp next year! I am more than grateful for the wonderful opportunity that was my internship, and I cannot wait to see what doors this experience opens for me.

“A Day in the Life” of a marketing intern, over two days since I was extra and took on two internships.

Friday: All In Solutions, Marketing Intern
8:00: (This is in the a.m., in case you were wondering). I wake up and spend fifteen minutes playing snooze tag. As this is a virtual internship, I can spend the time I would be commuting, contemplating life from my bed.

9:00: I get on my work laptop with my coffee in hand.

11:00: I began working on whatever project I had left off yesterday. Right now, I am working on re-designing AIS’s benefits and orientation presentations.

1:00: I email my supervisor some questions about the presentation.

2:00: I have my weekly Zoom meeting with my supervisor. We go over the progress of my work so far. They tell me that the company is impressed with the new business card I designed for them and would like to start the process of ordering new ones. I sign off with the task of figuring out how to share the card design on Vistaprint with the rest of the team.

3:30: Vistaprint does not allow you to share your design with others, so only I can order the new cards. Great. Thank you, Vistaprint.

4:00: After internally screaming for thirty minutes, I decided to give the login to my supervisor so they could order the cards themselves.

4:15: I am done for the day and start searching for food.

Saturday: Spotsylvania Farmers Market, Market Management and Administrative Intern
5:00: (This is sadly in the a.m., too) I wake up and question why I choose to get up earlier than my dog. He looks very shocked and confused to see me awake. For context, most of the time, I fall asleep around 1-2 a.m.

6:00: I leave the house with my purse, and a bag filled with snacks and other essentials. I swear, even a diaper bag wouldn’t be big enough for me.

6:45: I arrive at the market with my Dunkin coffee in hand.

7:00: I help set up the two tents and clean up the trash that the lovely teens from last night left for us.

8:00: The market starts.

9:00: I am in charge of the market manager’s tent while they take some pictures around the market for Facebook. I try to answer some questions from customers. The keyword is I tried. I am much more efficient at handling the SNAP EBT transactions (thank you, Marshalls and Home Goods for my prior cashier training!).

10:00: My mom gave me a list of things to get, so I head out to visit some other tents.

11:00: The market manager and I talk about some new ideas for events at the market, specifically for kids. We also start to talk about possibilities for the upcoming fall season.

Noon: We eat some fantastic pupusas from the taco stand, and notice that the market has started to die for the day, so we deal with some administrative tasks.

1:00: The market is officially closed, so I help to take down the tent, put away the cones and signs around the parking lot, and load everything into the U-Haul.

1:30: I am sweaty, hungry, and tired. I head for home, shower, eat some leftovers, and take a long nap.

One of the many reasons I wanted to do an internship was to experience a different work environment. I’ve worked as a hairstylist since I was seventeen years old. It’s the only job experience I’ve had, and I wanted to experience the complete opposite of the service industry.

Service Industry vs. Office Environment

My internship with the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park helped me not only expand my skill set but to also experience a different work environment. With the Park Service, I was in a relaxed office environment. I did occasionally have to go out to the visitor centers and some of the trails, but most of the time I was in an office. This is the complete opposite of what I am used to. I’m used to a fast-paced environment with a central focus on satisfying client needs. At the salon, I’m always either with a client, cleaning, or answering the phone. I have to multitask a lot and am always running around doing something.

Skills I picked up at my internship included time management and inventorying chemical products. I was often given multiple tasks all at once within this position but had different deadlines to meet for each of them. This gave me plenty of time to focus on prioritizing what needed to be done the soonest and helped me improve my time management skills. The skills I’ve picked up working at the hair salon are communication and multitasking. I have to be good at communicating with clients to have a clear understanding of what they are asking from me and to deliver the customer’s desired outcome. Both of these environments had a big emphasis on teamwork.

Impact on my Future Career Plans

Experiencing this internship has given me some clarity on my future career plans. I would like to take a step back from the hair industry. I’ve enjoyed my time doing hair and I will continue to renew my license. However, this internship has taught me that I enjoyed the office environment more than I anticipated. Also, from what I witnessed at the National Park Service; I would like to go into the business side of government. Ideally, I’ll start out with administrative work and work my way up to management. I’m still not one hundred percent sure what I want to do and the details are still somewhat fuzzy, but that’s okay. Many college students think they need to have their lives and careers figured out by the time they graduate. In reality, the majority of students aren’t sure what they are going to do, and they have plenty of time to figure it out.

While interning at the Fredericksburg field office for Congress member Abigail Spanberger, I have learned that there is never a dull moment! Most days when I head into the office, I leave my home around 11:30am to arrive at noon. Once I get there, we have our daily meeting to discuss our goals for the day, what everyone’s tasks are, any upcoming events that we can attend or help run, and conversations that we are having with voters. As I write this post, we are in the persuasion stage of the campaign where we are talking with voters that are either independents, undecided, or have voted for both parties throughout their years of voting. These voters are extremely important to reach because they can lean either way and can determine whether or not Abigail keeps her seat in Congress.

After our daily meeting, I am usually paired up with another canvasser, and we head out to a neighborhood or two. Once we arrive, we park and then use an app called “Minivan” that allows us to see what houses we need to go to. This app also allows us to see the name of the voter in the house and a script that we try to follow when going to their doors. We mainly explain that they are now in the 7th district (this is because of the Census redistricting), and that Abigail Spanberger will be on their ballot this November. We also ask if they know about Abigail and if not, we are more than delighted to discuss all of her positions. One big question that we always ask is “what issue is most important to you?”  Regardless of what they may vote for in future, we want to bring their most important issues to Abigail because not only does she care but she still is their Congresswoman until November.

Sometimes, a resident will open the door and want to engage in conversation with us and some days no one answers the door and the people that do, would rather not engage in any type of discussion. Either way, we always leave literature that states what Abigail stands for and includes websites with additional information where they can research more about her.

Usually, we are finished canvassing around 3pm and we head back to the office for our “check out” meeting. In these meetings, we discuss conversations that we had with voters, what most important issues we were seeing, and we are also able to ask any questions about things that maybe we could say differently to voters in order to have longer and more engaging conversations with them. Finally, I head home, and that office day is complete.

Another type of office day that I have is a virtual office day. These days are similar to in person office days but instead of going to voters’ doors, we get to stay in the air conditioning at home and make phone calls to them. It works the same as going to voters’ doors, I have the same script that I read, and interact with them via telephone instead of being one on one. Sometimes I will have callers that are ready to talk to me about issues happening around the world and other times I have people hang up on me after I tell them who I am calling for. This type of internship, is not for the faint of heart, you will definitely hear some “not so nice things” said to you. On virtual days, we still have the daily meetings and the “check out” meetings via Google meet.

Any day whether in person, in the office or virtual is exciting because I know that I am helping a politician, whom I believe in, keep her seat in Congress. I am also learning skills that I will utilize for the rest of my life, and I am having conversations with voters that I will never forget.

I have already talked about how I found the opportunity for my internship at the Yarmouth History Center, so now I’d like to share how I found the grant opportunity. At first, I was not sure where to look. I had checked several places on campus where I thought it would be (both on the campus website and in person), but I was not finding anything that looked like it could help me specifically.
For a while, I was not even sure if I would be working at the Yarmouth History Center as an intern–the director of the History Center was very understanding and said I could work as a volunteer for the summer. I would not have been paid for my work, but it would have given me the experience necessary to figure out whether I wanted to be an archivist or not–which was my whole goal in finding an internship, to begin with.
But then one day as I was looking through my email, I came across an offer for a grant–one that specifically could help me. Grant prizes could range anywhere from $500-$1500. I emailed the director of the History Center again and told her of the grant opportunity, put in my application, and some money!

There are a few words of advice I would give to anyone else who would like to apply for an internship grant; firstly that would be to know where to look for internship opportunities. I had checked all over campus multiple times–both offline and online–but I ended up getting information about my grant through an email. Check with your professors about where to look and what to look for, but at the same time keep in mind that UMW internship grants will not open for application right at the start of the semester as I thought. This may have been a contributing factor to why I could not find information about the grants at first. Not only had I started looking a little too early, but I also think I could have had a clearer idea of where to even look.
Here is a helpful link with more information about UMW’s internship grants: https://www.umw.edu/careercenter/students/internships/internship-grants/

As July wrapped up, my time with the Lexington County Blowfish officially came to a close. From broadcasting to sales training to guest playing on the actual roster, it feels like I’ve done just about everything this summer. I’d like to use this blog post to look back at how exactly I came to find myself two states and seven hours away from Fredericksburg, working in a front office that had never once heard of Mary Washington, the school or the person.
This time last year, I knew that I wanted to spend the summer of 2022 doing baseball play-by-play. I had the fall and winter seasons (2021-22) of UMW sports on the horizon, meaning plenty of chances to learn how to call a game. But while those were great chances, baseball was and still is my passion, and I knew a summer internship was the best chance to really explore this as a career option.
Understanding that most professional teams start in April, and also require multiple years of baseball broadcast experience, I set my sights on the collegiate summer ranks instead of the pro level. Through conversations with multiple professionals in the industry, I located three primary ways to find this kind of internship. The Sportscasters Talent Agency of America, which prioritizes its members but does have a public job board, the website TeamworkOnline, which posts jobs in all sports, and the websites of individual teams. Between the three, I located and applied for about 15 internships from Massachusetts to South Dakota.
The immediate feedback, as expected, was scarce. A couple of teams informed me they no longer had openings, but most just resulted in disturbing silence in the wake of my applications. I was applying primarily with tape from volleyball and basketball, and a practice inning called directly off a video from my laptop. There were people my age applying who had been calling baseball since they were in high school, and had connections from their school that no UMW alumnus (that I could find) could provide. Finally, I turned to the Blowfish, which are part of the Coastal Plain League (CPL).
I knew of the CPL from having friends play in years past, and I knew where Lexington County was because UMW played there during spring break my freshman year. With that knowledge, I printed out the application, filled it out quickly, and emailed it back in along with my demo tape. Within 36 hours, I had an interview!
I interviewed over Zoom with the two co-owners and the assistant general manager. The interview was calm and low-key, with it being made clear how much they liked my tape immediately. They offered me the internship after about 10 minutes, and I accepted a few weeks later. The rest, as they say, is history. This summer was a blast and then some, and they’ve already offered me a paid position to come back for 2023. Regardless of whether or not I accept, this experience was the best I could’ve asked for, and it all started after over a dozen rejections.

Interning with the James Monroe Museum has been wonderful; they have helped me learns so much about a potential career in museums. In the time since I wrote my first blog post, I was included in talks with the director of the James Monroe Museum, the James Farmer Multicultural Center, and the guest speaker we are planning on hosting for Native American History Month. The conversations that we had during the planning process were extremely enlightening. For example, part of the discussion touched upon needing to be aware of how sensitive the content we are planning on highlighting can be. This in turn lent itself to including the Talley Center in this program to ensure that there would be a safe space for people to discuss how the content has impacted them.
Another task I was given during my internship was to create a social story. A social story is a narrative that describes what the experience in a space will be. These are very useful for caretakers of those with different disabilities or those with anxieties. I created the social story in two different formats. The first one was a comic strip using photos from the museum that took a character throughout the space. I then made a video using the comic strip with a voiceover narration so that the media would remain accessible for all audiences. This allowed me to get even better at using Adobe Spark, which is a skill I am looking forward to honing in the future. The other version of a social story that we created was a long form narrative for an older audience. This takes a more of an in-depth focus of what walking through the museum would be like.
Before I did this internship, I had no idea how much work, thought, and planning goes into creating events for the public. If I do decide to pursue a career in museums or public history, I will have so much knowledge and experience to bring to the table, thanks to this experience. I hope that, if this is a field I am fortunate to have a career in, I will be able to make sure that the programs and space are accessible for every visitor. This would include small details, like ensuring that there is a mental health professional present for difficult conversations or having a social story available. I am so grateful for this experience and I look forward to what the future holds!