🌱 Internship Portfolio Essay (500 - 800 words)

• reflect on accomplishments, challenges, skills gained, relationships developed, observations, applied coursework.
• career skills enhancement goals for the rest of the year.

I am working as an intern at Dr. Jimenez-Soto’s Living Agroecology Lab. During these three months, I have faced several challenges, learned new skills, and developed professional relationships. This essay is a full reflection of my internship experience so far and a look at what I want to accomplish in the remaining of the year.

My goals for this internship were to write one to two blog posts and interviews with the laboratory staff respectively with the option of creating a visual explainer for one of the lab’s research questions. Overall, my objective is to improve and create communication materials for the lab and improve current web communication channels, mainly the official website.

Accomplishments

One of my first accomplishments in this internship is refreshing a website that wasn’t my own. The first project I tackled was updating the Living Agroecology lab’s website. I condensed the site’s header and footer, redesigned the News and People sections, and did slight touch-ups to the rest of the pages. To image heavy-pages, I identified the lack of alt text and encouraged my supervisor to describe context-heavy pictures.

Challenges

One of my biggest challenges during this internship has been overcoming writer’s block. While I have no problem writing anecdotal stories, factual stories using a report-style has been a struggle for years. I worried that what I had to day had no value or was scared of judgement. I was able to overcome it by reading the words of people whom I heavily disagree, people who write for a living or hold personal blogs. If they could speak their convictions so loud, then why me, who is so confident about the morality of their beliefs, couldn’t do it? It’s not that I was encouraged to speak against them but encouraged to share my experience and beliefs with my voice just like them.

Skills Gained

The skills I gained fall into the web development and creative writing areas. I want to highlight five skills I have gained or developed during this internship experience, communication, time management, problem solving, independence, and willingness to learn.

• Communication Most of my communication between my supervisor and co-workers was through email or video calls. Of both, I think the most challenging was writing weekly reports to my supervisor. Not only I had to keep track of what I had done each given week but also my plans and questions. I tend to either just bulldoze through life or ruminate on the details so remembering to taking a step back, reflect, and move forward was a challenge I appreciate.

• Time management While I have been tracking my time for a few years, designating what was internship time in a remote experience was harder than I thought. Because unlike coursework where I had clear deliverables and start and end times, the hours tracked for an internship with a heavy writing component don’t work like that. Inspiration may strike anytime and my thoughts are furtive. It was an exercise in conscientiousness and patience to be open-minded about what I should accept as time spent on the internship. It was also difficult because there are no physical barriers. Unlike in-person work, being in work and out of work isn’t limited to a physical location.

• Problem solving During this internship, I really wanted to challenge myself and face my writer’s block. While at the time of writing this essay I cannot say for a fact that I have done so, I believe I have made a lot of progress.

• Independence Because of the remote nature of this internship and the hands-off approach of my supervisor, I was free to decided on my day to day tasks and goals. Of course, this internship experience has a set of clear objectives and deliverables that were agreed beforehand between my supervisor and me which I wanted to fulfill. Nevertheless, I had a lot of freedom. For example, I could brainstorm and design ideas for the website under loose constraints, and you bet I made full use of my web development experience. Similarly, as I struggled at the beginning of the internship to focus on the writing component, I was able to shift my attention into the website refresh, a project which I had already taken several notes before the official start of the internship.

• Willingness to Learn Last but not least, my biggest hurdle was facing and overcoming my writer’s block. I had to be willing to learn about myself and face my fears head on. On many occasions, I was uncomfortable and terrified. Like I mentioned in the challenges section, I also had to be willing to learn perspectives that made me uncomfortable to see the value of my voice.

Relationships Developed

The two professional relationships I developed during this internship are with my supervisor and one of my co-workers, Victoria Brown.

Applied Course work

I think the course I consistently recalled during this internship was Introduction to Environmental Science and my Science Communication course at St. Pete College. In both courses, I designed a pamphlet about the benefits of a green activity, recycling and composting respectively. In the former course, I was part of a group while in the latter I was by myself. I recalled these activities because of their science communication and visual components which I have been struggling with in this internship experience.

Career/Skill-Enhancement Goals

1. Code my portfolio! Apart from my creations during this internship experience and the internship seminar, I want to share all the cool coursework I have created across my college experience. I wrote some categories which they will fall into.

• Text
• Multimedia
• Videos
• Graphics

My final internship portfolio submission will likely not have other coursework included.

2. Finish CSS course from Code Academy I started this course last year and I have a few section to go. It’s been an

3. Finish setting up my blog