Students pursue internships as a way of enhancing their college experience and education

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Studnent Internships 1
Marquez baiting a shark in South Africa in order to identify dorsal fin and other physical characteristics.

To follow up last week’s article about the new internship coordinator position, the Catalyst profiles student internships.

Students say interning gives them real world experience, insights into their interests, thesis ideas and prepares them for their future careers.

ANNA RODRIGUEZ

Second year Anna Rodriguez, an Anthropology AOC, is currently doing three internships; one at Rosemary Birthing Home, the Maternally Yours radio show at WSLR and managing the My Body Is Not An Apology movement Facebook page.

Rosemary Birthing Home is a local center for midwives. “I basically just do a lot of office work there.” Rodriguez said. “We’re trying to get statistics from midwifery programs around the nation to try to see the effects on health Maternally Yours is a local radio show on WSLR, “I do audio editing for them.”

Last year, professor of Sociology Emily Fairchild hosted a representative from Maternally Yours, who gave a presentation to students. Fairchild later posted a student’s list email that they were hiring new interns, Rodriguez applied and got it.

“That’s [also] how I got my Rosemary Birthing home internship, they [Maternally Yours] recommended me to them.” Rodriguez said. “I’m hopefully going to do my thesis as an ethnography on Rosemary Birthing Home.”

My Body Is Not An Apology is a social movement by spoken word poet Sonya Renee. Last year Renee came to New College and performed. Rodriguez opened up for her and found out about the internship opportunity through Facebook. She started as the Instagram Coordinator and I was promoted to manage the Facebook page.

Student Internships 2“Basically I just post articles that deal with any intersectional issues and write commentaries and reply to messages.” Rodriguez said.

“For Rosemary Birthing Home I usually go Wednesdays from 11 to 6 and Maternally Yours I usually have 2 hours of editing every Tuesday and then The Body Is Not an Apology stuff is usually 15 hours a week doing Instagram and Facebook.” Rodriguez said. “So they are time consuming but I feel like I am getting a lot more practical skills that I would not get in a class setting and I’m networking a lot.” Rodriguez continued.

“I’m really interested after I graduate to pursue a career in global health politics so I feel like getting the practical sense of that and having actual skills, like social media skills, how to take and look at statistics like at Rosemary Birthing Home and then getting the political and current events from Maternally Yours, I think I’m just getting a lot more real world experience.”

“A lot of people don’t know that you can make internships into Tutorials.” Rodriguez said. “One of my tutorials is Maternally Yours and the Rosemary Internship.”

PAIGE LEARY

Second year Paige Leary, a neurobiology AOC has interned at the Roskamp Institute in Sarasota since last fall.

“They study a lot of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and brain cell death,” Leary said. “So it’s really cool because I’ll be in class for chemistry or biology and they’ll be talking about certain techniques and I’ll be like I’ve done that before I’ve seen that before, it’s really cool.”

Leary found out about the internship through an adjunct professor who had a contact at the Roskamp Institute.

“I’m there twice a week from nine to five,” Leary said. “[Recently] I’ve started to do some independent things, for example I’ll do staining procedures and image analysis. Right now I’m actually in review for publication. It’s cool to interact with the people who actually work there who are established in their fields or PHD students.”

MELISSA MARQUEZ

“I’ve always wanted to be a shark biologist.” Third year, Mellissa Marquez, Marine Ecology and Conservation AOC said.

Marquez has interned at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas for her 2012 ISP, Oceans Research in South Africa and Wild Tracks in Belize in 2013.

“[The Internships] definitely helped me refine what I want to do,” Marquez said. “The Ocean’s Research one actually is my thesis. Definitely all of them helped me with networking and making lifelong friends for sure. My thesis is on the movement patterns of great white sharks down in South Africa based on both their gender and also their maturity level.”

To find the internships, Marquez researched where others in the marine biology field have worked. “So kind of up keeping with my idols I’ve been able to see where they went.” Marquez said.

STEPHEN FLEMING

“I did an internship with Abominable Pictures in Los Angelos for my ISP,” said second year Stephen Fleming, an English AOC. “They’re a television production company. Their most famous thing is Children’s Hospital, which is a hospital drama parody on Adult Swim. But when I was there we were doing preproduction for News Readers which is like a 60 Minutes parody.”

Fleming found the internship through his brother who works there.

“My title was Production Intern. While I was there it was leading up to filming so all of the scripts came out, so I mainly dealt with those. I did printing, copying, and distributing.”

“It’s definitely given me much more of a real sense of my future. I’ve done a lot of creative writing and that’s something that I would be interested in pursuing.”

KATHERINE JAMES

Katherine “Katie” James, Biology/Math AOC interned at Save Our Seabirds, a wild bird rescue and sanctuary in Sarasota, last ISP.

“They have kind of a bourgeoning internship program there.” James said. I found out about it from another New College student who did it last ISP.”

“I was working in the hospital so it was just a lot of handling pelicans but I also got to handle some ospreys, red shoulder hawks, I actually kept a list of the different species. I learned so much, really everything about them [birds]. I was trying to see where my interests are going and I had to come up with my thesis prospectus.”

“Internships are awesome because you get to actually be out there in the world doing things meeting people, not that academics aren’t great, but being a little more well-rounded in getting some real firsthand experience. I think it would be really good if we had a place you could go to see the kind of internships other people have done and get ideas. So I’m excited for that. And Save Our Seabirds is awesome so people should go volunteer there if they have the chance.”

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