Having worked for about a month and a half so far this summer, I\u2019m rapidly realizing that my internship experience now could be very different from the one that I had when I was here last winter. I guess I wasn\u2019t prepared for the possibility that (gasp) not all internship experiences are the same. And just as I was challenged in the winter, PON being my first real job, I\u2019m finding myself challenged now by a whole new set of issues that I\u2019ll have to work through this summer.<\/p>\n
For one thing, I\u2019m doing two part-time jobs \u2013 one at PON and the other as an intern at a mediation organization. This arrangement was partly my attempt to have a chance to do everything that I was interested in this summer \u2013 which has been satisfying. And I\u2019m learning a lot from both, which is certainly what I wanted. At the same time, what has been challenging is trying to maintain a sense of continuity throughout both internships. Instead of being able to plan out my time by the week, I have found that planning has to happen both at a daily level (\u201cWhat can I get done today?\u201d) and a much longer-term level (\u201cHow am I going to finish this project in twelve weeks, with only two days per week?\u201d). But being forced into this sort of time management is probably a good thing to have happen, and if I do get the hang of it eventually, it would really help me out in my next big academic project (let\u2019s face it, at this point to me it seems like a downright monolith), my senior thesis.<\/p>\n
The different types of work involved in each internship also form an interesting mix. Whereas my work at PON has generally been research- and theory-oriented, I have to use the skills that I am learning at the mediation organization every day. Yesterday, at the mediation job, I caught myself literally remembering a word-for-word phrase from \u201cGetting to Yes\u201d during a conversation with a client. This can\u2019t be a terrible sign (although it does prove that I\u2019m a nerd), but the theory\/practice split is still something that has always troubled me since working in this field. It seems like this issue is one that I\u2019ll be thinking about a lot this summer, as I try to internalize the things that I learn at PON while being oriented, ultimately, towards practice.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m really excited about the projects that I\u2019ve got going at PON. I\u2019m working on a combination of research projects, creating photo slideshows for the PON website, a writing project, events to plan, and this blog \u2013 all of which makes for a nice combination (during one of my first days here, I made the mistake of spending literally the whole day trying to only read articles \u2013 by 5pm, my brain was fried, to say the least). My biggest goal is to take an active role in the structure and time allocation of my internship, and to force myself to take initiative in managing and accomplishing all my tasks.<\/p>\n
For now, I\u2019m going to try and update this blog at least one or two times a week. Stay tuned for updates and thanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having worked for about a month and a half so far this summer, I\u2019m rapidly realizing that my internship experience now could be very different from the one that I had when I was here last winter. I guess I wasn\u2019t prepared for the possibility that (gasp) not all internship experiences are the same. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":920,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pon-intern"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pon1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}