Internship Overview:
The LINK internship program is a 3 week program where students go out to intern at a business. Students also complete project during this time.
For my internship I went to the Museum at the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Project OverviewFor my project I cleaned and prepared a 140 year old sleeper car to be an exhibit. I spent the entire second week of my internship scrubbing it and vacuuming it, and during my third week I prepared a video that explains it's history, which can be found below.
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Reflection:My most useful skill coming into LINK was being able to quickly learn and adapt to new situations. Upon arriving on my first day of LINK I was treated as an employee and received fairly minimal training. However, I was able to quickly learn and gain an understanding of what my job would be at the museum and was given many responsibilities early on, even being left alone as the sole attendant at the museum.
The most important skills I developed during LINK were the aforementioned adaptability and ability to deal with people. My first job left me in a position of interacting with customers rarely, so being a more public employee at the museum was a new experience for me. I had to answer questions for people, give directions, show off exhibits and have a lot of personal knowledge on those exhibits, and of course maintain that people wore masks in the museum. With many of the visitors being tourists, many people didn’t know about Colorado mask rules and many people entered either without masks at or or with their masks down. Most of these people were willing to wear it when asked, but a few very stubborn groups came through that I had to deal with personally. The other two aspects of my work there were cleaning and desk work, the desk work often being very boring and the most challenging part. Sometimes it was just a slow day and I would have nothing to do for hours at a time. Sometimes I could clean during this time but mostly there would be nothing for me to do and I would just have to get through those slow days. I feel that I didn’t really gain anything from times like that. Sure, it was a new experience but I knew jobs can be like that. I have no real plans for after high school. My only real plan currently is to finish high school. However, this reinforced that college is not what I want for my future. There is nothing I’m really interested in studying in college and I’d much rather just go straight into the workforce. Working for 3 weeks helped to make me understand that. I feel that I was important at the museum during my internship and I think my mentor would agree. As well as having equal responsibilities to employees I also spent much of my time preparing an exhibit that will be open fully to the public after COVID. As long as future interns can keep the same level of responsibility that I was given, I think the Railroad museum at D&SNGR should continue to accept interns. |