Personal Narrative: My Internship At Ramapo College

Last year was my first year as a college student. After much anticipation, I was finally starting my university career and studying what I wanted. Classes started and everything was okay, but deep down I knew I wanted to study away from home. When graduating high school I had decided to stay, thinking it was the smartest decision since going to college is not the easiest transition and adding going to another country would have been too much for me. But two weeks into my first semester I decided to start my research.

I am currently interning at West Millbrook Middle School, at 8155 Strickland Road, Raleigh NC, 27615. West Millbrook Middle School is a traditional school calendar that holds a capacity of 1120 students. Although for the 2015-2016 school year only 929 students are in attendance. (296 6th graders, 313 7th graders and 320 8th graders)

Over this past year, a single most outstanding accomplishment that has been a seemingly constant source of pride for me above all else. The summer right before my senior year I took part in Miami Dade’s paid internship program. During that school year, my Information Technology teacher personally told me about the internship program and highly recommended that I go through with it. Eventually, time passed and there was a presentation about the internship and as soon as the presentation ended, I made sure to do all in my power to take part in it. At first, I will admit, I was not entirely sure what to expect from this experience; this was an entirely new experience for me. Despite this, one thing I did know that this internship experience would ultimately benefit me more than anything I have ever accomplished.

In the fall of 2005, I took my first steps onto the campus of Appalachian State University with my sister who was entering as a freshman. One of my most vivid memories from my childhood is walking hand in hand with my then eighteen year old, wide eyed, and prospective sister into the Watauga dorms. Afterwards, as we left down King Street, I distinctly remember gazing back towards the magnificent North Carolina mountains and yearning to stay. Even at the age of five, I knew that one day I would follow in her footsteps and become an Appalachian Mountaineer.

Although in the past four years at Roanoke Valley Early College (RVEC) I have grumbled about how long I have been in the program and mentioned being ready to graduate almost everyday, writing this paper almost feels like a farewell. A bittersweet moment that I can safely say I deserve because of how hard I worked towards seeing this year all come together. The best way to describe is stunning. I would almost always hear any and everyone say that senior year comes up fast and I now know that they were not joking even a little. During my time at Roanoke Valley Early College I have evolved into a person that I am proud to call myself through my internship, staff members, career aspirations, and individual improvement.

I raised money for scholarships to camp; helping hundreds of kids come to camp that would be unable to afford it otherwise. Development of a diverse staff was important to me. So I recruited, interviewed and hired central city staff to be part of camp. This involved going to their neighborhood for interviews because they had no means of getting to camp.

There were many major highlights on my first week of my internship at Gunston Summer School. I was able to observe and learn how to do schedule changes. My supervisor counselor told me that for this week we were going to do a lot of those and we did. I was also able to learn about teachers, administrator and parents' concerns about students. Summer School is different from a regular middle school in the regular school year. All middle school who send students to the Summer classes meet in just one school, and schools take turns every year. Also, I learn more about the students who have a 504 plan, which in my past work experience I haven’t had the chance to do much. It was interesting to see how much paper work goes into it.

After my internship with GDI this summer, I am keenly interested in continuing that work as an Associate. I would like to return to GDI because of two factors: the work environment and the team. GDI’s work environment enabled me to take on as much responsibility as I could handle, to follow my interests and develop my ideas, and to constantly improve my professional skills. Furthermore, GDI’s team dynamics allowed me to feel like a contributing member of the team. While the team supported my personal and professional development, I felt that, in return, I could give them input that was genuinely considered as well as deliverables that supported their work. Overall, my experience as a member

I have had the opportunity to be in constant contact with many great Texas A&M mentors (current and former students) since my Junior year at high school. My mentors definitely have made an impact and set the ground work that influenced me in becoming involved in leadership activities at Texas A&M University. During my high school junior and senior years they assured me that becoming involved in leadership activities and student life would set a great foundation and empower me with the Aggie pride.

A controversial issue in the United States as of recently is should the death penalty be allowed or not. The death penalty or capital punishment, is the punishment for a severe crime by way of death. As of July 1, 2015, the death penalty is used in thirty one states in the United States. The main states with it are in the south and Midwest and the states without it are up north. This is very controversial in the United States at the moment. The death penalty should be banned from the United States because it is wrong morally and it gives criminals an easy way out for crimes they should have to do their time for.

This paper points out the reasoning for why and how the Supreme Court and judicial system became what it is known for today. The Supreme Court was not always a perfect and well organized system. The court early beginnings started out after a decision at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was establish. This decision called for a national supreme court. With the Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress made the US Supreme Court possible. One key person who had a role in developing the Supreme Court into a court of “judicial review” was the fourth Chief Justice, John Marshall. Today the judicial system is broken down into three levels; local, state, and federal. And within these levels are different levels of the court system that handle civil and criminal cases. Each level has a different role to play in the court system but, they all serve the same purpose.

Before accepting the position to intern in the Web Communications department of DeSales University, I started by asking multiple people if they knew of any open internship opportunities on campus. Since I did not have a car, I needed something that was on campus because I would have no way of getting to any position off campus. I started by asking Nick Luchko if there were any open internship positions in his office in McShae. I had been a part of the L.E.A.DSU program with him and we had stayed in contact ever since. Unfortunately, he did not have any open positions or know of any, so I then asked my supervisor and professor, Dr. McKnight. Dr. McKnight referred me to Tom McNamara, who is the Executive Director of Communications at DeSales.

Through this internship, I have learned more about myself and what I enjoy doing. For example, I learned that I actually enjoy participating in different aspects of research such as scoring data analyzing how the data applies to clinical settings and real world matters. This came as a slight surprise to me, as I thought I would get bored with my tasks early on and regret choosing the internship site that I did. However, I could see myself writing up grants and conducting research for an organization as a possible future career path. I have even decided to extend my internship by continuing to volunteer throughout next semester as well. Another surprise came in the form of

Being part of Nidec’s IT team I was ecstatic and excited despite that I do not have the experience for the position. I was taught on some of the things that I have not experienced yet; I am able to gain skills and will keep on learning. One of the obstacles that I will need to overcome this semester is to manage my time by balancing school work and internship, this experience will help me improve and prepare for the trial’s I will be facing in the future.

My internship at Calerin Forge has been simply phenomenal. The range of things I’ve done and new things I have learned will stick with me for the rest of my life and I will continue to learn from my mentor David Buress as long as I am able to do so. I have learned many new technical skills from working with different materials, new tools, or simply just learning better ways of doing things I already knew. I have also been taught aspects of using blacksmithing to make a living and the needed skills involved in pricing and selling handmade items. I started this internship/apprenticeship with a few years of experience under my belt already which really helped with this because I did not have to learn everything from the ground up. I was actually