Week 4:
Learning how to Network and Plan

August 9, 2016

This week for my internship I had a lot more tasks to complete. As I mentioned previously, I was waiting to hear back from the food pantry about starting dates. I received an email explaining what the HPA students would be doing and what would be required of them, as well as three different possible start dates. Before I could respond with a finalized starting date, I needed to check with Beth and Andrew in New York about moving forward. Once I got the go ahead from them, I was able to contact the food pantry to get a start date on the calendar.

The process with the community service experience for the students has taught me a lot about networking and communication. I am learning how to communicate with multiple people on the same task in order to complete it. I am also learning how to make events happen. I have never been much of a planner, and I usually just go with whatever is happening that day and do not think too far into the future. This experience is definitely showing me how much time and effort it takes to plan and execute events.

This week I was also in contact with Anoosha and Alejandro, two volunteers for Project Rousseau, regarding the mentor recruitment process. One of my assigned tasks is to create a document on how to improve the Chicago chapter’s mentor recruitment. After talking to both of them about how their chapter’s recruit, (New York and Rice) I was able to create a potential plan for the Chicago Chapter. I sent the document to Beth and awaited a response.

When I heard back from Beth, she said she was very pleased with my report and gave me more tasks to complete regarding the mentor recruitment in Chicago. I was asked to create a timeline of the entire mentor recruitment process that takes about three months to complete, as well as create an application for the possible mentors.

These tasks are also helping to teach me about the importance of planning, being organized, and having a strategy in place for the future.

Finally, I went on my final site visit this week to the Museum of Contemporary Photography. This was a great experience. Although the museum was a bit small, it was still very interesting. I love photography and the exhibit they are showing now focuses on the environment. This exhibit will be shown until October 9th. There were very interesting photos from around Chicago and other cities, focusing on the pollution in those cities. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and believe the kids will too.

This experience with Project Rousseau is really showing me that I do have an interest in helping people. At the beginning of the internship, I was a bit disappointed when I found out I would not actually be working with the students, however, it just ended up reinforcing the fact that I really do like interacting and helping people face to face.