Using my Work Readiness Skills during my Internship

      Over the summer, I am participating in an internship called EarthScope. I am working with other teenagers living across the county to learn about current environmental issues and sustainability in our world and how to educate the public using radio, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Postive:

       The first skill that I used very well was communicating effectively with my project group, supervisor, and interviewee. My group's goal was to research about our interviewee (Christian Frankenburg) and his studies, come up with questions to ask him during the radio interview, send them to our supervisor for any last revisions, and lastly complete the interview. I was able to keep in contact over text and email with my group and communicate successfully to create or interview questions. Once our questions were completed I contacted our supervisor and thought through what I wanted to say and clearly stated what I needed from her. When the day of the interview came and I was speaking with Dr. Frankenburg, I was able to ask him my questions in a simple and definitive way. I learned that being able to communicate at any job where community outreach and education is involved, you need to be able to communicate effectively with others.    

      The second skill that I demonstrated was being able to work with others. All of my group members had different opinions and perspectives about the process of conducting an interview, but I was open to their ideas and able to back down when they wanted to express themselves. I was not afraid to say my own thoughts and opinions to the rest of the group. I learned a lot about collaboration, and that every single member of a group whether they are a leader or a wall-flower needs to be able to stand down to let others speak their mind and respect their thoughts but also be able to actively contribute to their group project. 

Negative:    

 During my internship, I noticed that I need to work on being more literate. Dr. Frankenburg, my interviewee, is studying the science of measuring Chlorophyll Fluorescence from space (a very very complicated process), and in order to ask appropriate  questions I needed to do lots of research about this topic. I tried reading lots and lots of articles and powerpoints but was still pretty confused about the concept. I feel that my interview questions could be improved if I was able to have a higher level of reading comprehension. I learned that if I want to later work in the scientific field, it is very important to be able to read an article and later have at least a basic understanding of what I just read. 

     Lastly, I would also like to improve on being able to serve the needs of others. When my group was calling Dr. Frankenburg for the interview we were having a lot of technical difficulties. I was getting very tense in our situation worrying a lot about ruining the interview and getting the radio show canceled. I now know that when I am stressed I need to be able to stay calm and help my other group members work out the problem.