The Animas Link Internship is a 3 week, (in normal circumstances, rather than covid) in which Animas Students intern in and around the community. This is very unique to AHS, meaning Animas Student are partaking in a important and very rare opportunity. The purpose and benefits of LINK is to gather important information in helping us decide possible career paths and having non-school responsibilities. Simply the benefits, are a deep dive in a world many high schoolers do not reach till later in life.
My internship was with Region 9 Economic Development District, one of, or the main encouragers and leaders in increasing the areas economic status. I chose the internship as Jenae encouraged me to reach out to them as well as meeting my future internship mentor, Heather Otter as a Job fair type event held by Animas High School.
"The Region 9's mission is to be a regional leader, working cooperatively with the private and public sectors to enhance the economic conditions in the area, and improve the region's economic prosperity."
Preparation and Anticipation Summer Update (July 20):
Spring update (February 18): I have chosen Region 9 Economic Development District as Janae as peaked my interest in it. I am excited to not be in school for 3 weeks and hopefully will learn something useful from the internship. What are you excited about? Are you nervous at all? Are there any last details that you need to confirm?
Winter update (January 13): I am speaking with Stephanie from the Durango and Silverton train, she is asking what I want to do. Hopefully it works out.
Fall update (October 10): While going into the internship, I have little to no feelings. I have more important work, such as homework to work on. Currently no fields of work are intriguing to me. My only concern is flaky companies which might nix my internship just before it happens.
Reflection: July 22
Throughout my internship I learned many things about myself, the professional world, strengths & weakness of myself, and my goals and ideas of the future. Because of covid-19, my internship was significantly different than your average AHS students 3 weeks internship, also as my internship was centered around economics, covid-19 gave me an unique and rare experience which I believed deepened my appreciation of the internship and the business I worked alongside. One key thing I learned about myself is my ability to adapt to negative situations and make the best of it. This is again due to covid-19 which disrupted the normal flow and traditional things you would associate with an internship. I was not able to work alongside employees at the company nor contact anyone besides my mentor. Plain and simple, I had an internship with my mentor, not my company. But this is not either of our's fault, it is covid's. This was the best thing we could possibly do, and I believe with that, I was still able to create a meaningful, worthwhile piece of work I am proud of. I also learned despite preferring to operate on my own and independently, in a situation like this, I would have prefered to work alongside my fellow employees to create my work. Unfortunately with covid, I was unable. This lead to me not being able to learn much about the professional world other than learning companies have lots of board meetings to decide direction. Luckly, and unluckily in context of internship, I have a job, and have had it for roughly 2 years, which has given me quite a bit of information on the professional world. I have touched on 1 strength already, another one was dedication to success and beautiful work in my project. Obviously I would be encouraged to do my best work as it reflects AHS, myself, and my family. And as someone who feels you must always do your best and reflect your best self to the world, I found it exceedingly important to work my hardest, listen, and always do everything that was required with a smile. In the future, I believe economics will be implemented into my college and career experience. Overall this experience was worthwhile and enjoyable. I learned quite a bit about myself and the world through doing it.
My Project:
Below is my project, in which I accumulated photos, interviews, historical pictures, graphs/ polls, and general information regarding covid-19 over the last 3 months.
Below is Heather and I's Initial Goals and Projects I would be taking on.