What is LINK?
LINK is a three week internship that Animas High School offers for all Juniors. A LINK internship provides insight into potential career paths and interests that juniors may have, which then allows for the student to make decisions or get a better understanding if that is what they are interested in as a career. During LINK, you spend 30-40 hours a week with your mentor, involving the skills you have learned, as well as previous skills you had outside of a classroom and apply it to your internship. LINK stands for "Leading Internships for New Knowledge", and during those three weeks juniors do not go to school, so it is solely focused on learning about the potential career that you are interning at.
Business Description-
The Pine River Library is a public library located in Bayfield, Colorado. It offers over 40,000 items including books, audio-books, DVD's, CD's, computers, etc, as well as an 'Imagination room' for children to go to for story time, singing and crafts. The reason why I chose the Pine River Library was to gain insight into the ins and outs of a library and see how one is run. My mentor, Brooke, is an author so that was a huge part of the reason why I chose the library as well. I want to be an author, so surrounding myself with books seemed like the perfect internship for me to be at.
Pine River Library can be contacted at: prlibrary.org/ 970-884-2222 |
(4/25/18)Preparation and Anticipation-
The internship process for me so far has been interesting. I say interesting because it has been long and a little bit stressful (even though I convinced myself multiple times that I was not stressed). But, to be truthful, I was. Contacting potential mentors and researching their companies and such have been kind of hard, because in truth, I wasn't sure what I wanted. Yes, I want to be an author, and I already knew that, so how can I find someone or have an internship for three weeks that can challenge me more in that belief and teach me in more ways than I could of even thought? Over the span of trying to find a mentor, I had reached out to 12 people. Some may say that's a lot, or some may say that's not a lot. I thought it was a lot. I researched places in and out of Durango such as Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Albuquerque. I figured in order to get the real experience of being a "grown up", I had to be away from town. Out of those 12 people I emailed and called, only four people got back to me. Four. One of which told me that they would love to have me and we can make a schedule, but about 2 weeks before I am due to go to LINK for the internship, they emailed and told me "Sorry. We just can't work with those hours anymore". Que stress mode. I have probably never researched that hard in such a short time span. I got in contact with an editor from Boulder, and he was really nice but told me that it just wouldn't work out, but he kept talking to me and giving me contacts of other people who may be able to mentor me. I was getting excited because I thought this could actually work. He told me there were workshops that I could attend and be apart of which was happening over the time of the three weeks. I was like "Perfect. This is awesome. I'll learn and get to do more than I ever even thought." Once again, wrong. I couldn't go because the person I would be staying with lived too far away and I don't know about you, but I am broke. So, back to the research. Then my mom reminded me about Brooke. A published author who also happens to work at the library in Bayfield. I wasn't as stoked just because it was in town, but I figured it would be good to get to know the ins and outs of a library and also spend time with an author. We met, I got my schedule, and I am now locked in. And yes, I am stoked. I am most excited to be able to spend my time writing and learning more about what it's like to be an author, as well as spend time in the library (because I love to read too). I made the decision I did to stick with Brooke and the library, because I think I will be able to learn a lot from her about writing and the process that it is to publish something. I also think it'll be cool to gain more of an understanding of how the library works and everything that goes into it. Even though it is here in town, I know I will learn a lot from it (and save my money).
(5/21/18)Reflection-
These pictures are some tasks I did, and also a little bit of the library.
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Overall, this experience allowed me to obtain more knowledge as to how libraries (or rather, PRL, because it is quite unique), is ran. Going into this internship, I didn't really expect that a lot went into libraries except the normal helping patrons with questions and checking them in and out kind of thing, but that is only one small part to it. I was actually surprised by the amount of work and programs that the library holds and takes part of. It was really eye opening to see that kind of thing and how each employee works together, despite their different roles in the library. The hardest part I struggled with during LINK was writing 1,000 (or more) words a day. Some days were easier, but a lot were harder than I expected because it takes a while to get into the "zone" and keep good ideas flowing, and normally when I write it for an amount of time, rather than an amount of words. Though, it was a lot of help to have Brooke to motivate me in my writing, as well as tell me about her own personal experiences writing. I discovered that even though writing 1,000 words everyday is a lot harder than I would have expected, I still am and was pretty disciplined with myself. I found what times work for me to write, so I won't get interrupted and even though I would tell myself I was done writing for the day, I would push myself further and write more. Although this internship helped me in a lot of ways, I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and after this internship I still know I want to be a writer and maybe work in a library for some down time, but it was very useful and beneficial to have Brooke helping me with my writing. My next step for accomplishing my goals senior year and beyond is just writing. Writing, writing, writing and expanding my skills and abilities to help me grow and learn.
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My Project-
For my project, I wrote a short story and submitted to different programs.