Three students share insight into three very different summer internships

Linfield Magazine Staff

English

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5 Questions: What I Did during My Summer Internship

DigitalCommons@Linfield

Linfield Magazine Volume 11 Number 2 Fall 2014 Article 11 Fall 2014 5 Questions: What I Did during My Summer Internship Linfield Magazine Staff Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine Recommended Citation Linfield Magazine Staff (2014) "5 Questions: What I Did during My Summer Internship," Linfield Magazine: Vol. 11 : No. 2 , Article 11. Available at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/linfield_magazine/vol11/iss2/11 This article is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. Shaterah Hall ’15Creative writingWhite Sands, N.M.Where you interned:I worked closely with archivist Rachael Woody and Rich Schmidt, director of resource sharing, in Nicholson Library at Linfield College.What were your primary duties?I was responsible for housing, repair-ing, digitizing and creating an online search tool and inventory for the Linfield College Photograph Collection.What were the best and most challenging aspects of your experience and why?Most people I’ve met are just as pleasantly guilty as I am of wishing they owned a time machine. In the archives, turning through folders, binders, plastics and boxes, I have never felt quite so trans-figured. The gentle handling of what are essentially artifacts is both sobering and exhilarating. It’s as if I’m an eyewitness to documented proof of mouth-open, arms up, academic and off-the-clock intriguing blurbs throughout time. The biggest challenge is attaching accurate and approximate dates to certain series.What did you learn and how might that impact your future career path?I would not have fully appreciated just how much it means to so many people to have been a part of their college history. Beyond that, I perceive there is something so profoundly beautiful in looking back at the doors that college experience opens. Going forward, I am  anxious to combine my passion for creative arts with anthro-pological practices within the information science of archival projects.How did your Linfield education support you in your internship?Every one of my courses at Linfield has concluded with my understanding expanded. I walk closer toward commence-ment with a richer empowerment in how to more deeply affect the world around me. Close reading, thematic critical analy-ses, and practice in defending and revising derived viewpoints, all aid in the detail orientation necessary in the archives. Sensitivity to the heritage of items, then, is a part of the continuous personal growth, stemming from interest cultivated in a community that loves learning.5 Questions:What I did during my summer internshipCats to CareersHelp Linfield students apply their knowledge and skills through an internship experience with your company or organization. Contact Kristi (Vertrees) Mackay ’91, assistant director of career development, 503-883-2606, kmackay@linfield.edu for assistance.Fall 2014 l i n f i e l d  m a g a z i n e  -  2 12 0  -  l i n f i e l d  m a g a z i n e  Fall 201414-0174 Fall magazine_final.indd  20 11/3/14  11:13 AMAlyssa Townsend ’15Mass communicationCaldwell, IdahoWhere you interned: I was an intern for the Citizenship Team at Waggener Edstrom (WE) Com-munications in Portland. The Citizenship Team works on initiatives and projects to support WE’s commitment to making a positive and sustainable social, environ-mental and economic impact through its services, employees, management of operations and contributions to society. @WE_Citizen is a Twitter account run by the Citizenship Team that focuses on what is going on in the citizenship field, with an emphasis on WE’s initiatives and corporate social responsibility (CSR) best practices. What were your primary duties?My role included managing the @WE_Citizen Twitter, writing the monthly citizenship newsletter, blogging, researching CSR initiatives, creating com-munication plans with my fellow interns and working on pro bono projects with WE’s nonprofit partners and more. What were the best and most challenging aspects of your experience and why?It was challenging in the beginning of my internship to feel comfortable sharing my point of view in a room full of public relations professionals. Although I am somewhat new to the field, everyone at WE made me feel comfortable and encouraged me to share my opinion. One of my favorite projects this summer was creating a social media plan for the Boys & Girls Club of Bellevue. This pro bono project gave me the opportunity to provide a needed service that might not otherwise have been available for a nonprofit I want to see succeed.What did you learn and how might that impact your future career path?It ultimately reaffirmed that I want to work in the PR field. However, I also learned that I want to make a difference and become a part of asking the crucial questions to make a company succeed.How did your Linfield education support you in your internship?Linfield, specifically the Mass Communication Department and my work-study position with the Office of Communications, helped me discover my passion for PR. The well-rounded education at Linfield has taught me how to think critically about important issues in our world, including citizenship, sustainability and more. Chris Beresford ’16Computer sciencePhoenix, Ariz.Where you interned: I interned at GoDaddy, which primarily serves as a domain registrar and also provides web hosting services.What were your primary duties? I worked on the Hosting Perfor-mance/Hosting Core Team at GoDaddy, where I helped build the software that the operations teams could use to diag-nose, fix and monitor server performance. What were the best and most challenging aspects of your experience and why?It’s pretty difficult to pick the best part about my internship – it was amaz-ing all-around. I was in an exciting and energetic environment that constantly challenged me with meaningful projects that had a direct benefit to the company. The most challenging part was probably learning all of the new technologies and languages during my first couple weeks. If I had to pick a ‘best moment,’ it would be day one, where I got to commit code into production. My boss sent an email out to the hosting department telling them about the feat, and it got passed up the leadership chain and resulted in me receiving praise directly from Blake Irving, the CEO – not a bad way to start the summer! What did you learn and how might that impact your future career path?I learned several new languages, tech-nologies and development methodologies. I learned how to develop web applications using Ruby on Rails in an agile development environment. By participating in team meetings, planning and demos, I gained an understanding of how teams work, which will assist me in obtaining my goal of eventually managing/leading teams in the software industry.How did your Linfield education support you in your internship?At Linfield, I’m learning a lot of valuable information, but more impor-tantly, I’m learning how to learn. Nobody is expected to know everything, but if you are capable of learning anything, then you’ll be a huge asset to any com-pany. I believe that many professors at Linfield recognize this, so they invest a lot of time and effort into giving us the best education possible. For more about my internship, check out my website: www.chrisberesford.net/Fall 2014 l i n f i e l d  m a g a z i n e  -  2 12 0  -  l i n f i e l d  m a g a z i n e  Fall 201414-0174 Fall magazine_final.indd  21 11/3/14  11:13 AM

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5 Questions: What I Did during My Summer Internship

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