Raquel Friedmann, IEP ’19

Amigos de Bolsa Chica Summer Internship

I obtained my Immersive Professional Learning experience by reaching out to organizations that were related to my field of study and career interest and asking if they needed a graduate intern to help complete special projects. This allowed me to target organization I may want to work for in the future and do meaningful work as a graduate intern. After MIIS I would like to work in the environmental education field so I was looking for an opportunity that combined these to aspects of my interest. My strategy paid off because I was able to find an organization that focused on environmental conservation and work on projects within their education department. In this experience I was given multiple projects with some overview information and guidance, but little supervision. I struggled a bit initially working independently on projects and doing self paced worked. In this experience I gain skills in time management and planning. I also learned how to best communicate with my supervisor to get all the information I needed to complete the projects successfully. As a graduate student it can be difficult to gauge what is expected of you when in an intern role. I tried to be upfront with my supervisor regarding what my skill levels were and how I want to grow through completing meaningful work. I did this during our initial planning and negotiating of the terms of my internship and it allowed the expectations to be clear from the beginning, and I was able to have the experience I was looking for. Overall my IPL experience provided me with professional connections and experience that I can take with me into my last year at MIIS and beyond.

Click here to read Raquel’s blog post on her IPL experience

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