Week One

Howdy! I survived my first week of my internship, and have officially been in College Station for a week. So far, I really like working at A&M and have really enjoyed Texas. The weather has been fantastic, 85 and sunny almost every day, but I keep getting warned it will not last and soon it will be 100+ degrees and HOT! I have a better idea of what I will be doing this summer, and while I knew this was going to be a great internship, I am truly getting some amazing experiences.

I will be doing three different things while I am here at A&M:

First, I will be working with New Student Programs. I will be co-advising the orientation leaders, working New Student Conferences, co-chairing the committee for Gig ‘Em Week (welcome week), doing some publications work, and anything else that comes up.

Because the president of NODA works in the Vice Presidents Office here, I will also be doing a project with her for the association. It sounds like I will be working on an online orientation training for new members of the organization. I will admit this project is a bit intimidating, and not something I know a lot about but it will certainly be an amazing experience to do a project that has the potential to have a huge impact on the entire organization.

Lastly, I will be working with Residence Life to do a project. I will be doing some benchmarking and looking at the training A&M has for RAs, RDs, and professional staff. I am glad I will have the opportunity to work on some training, since I am definitely interested in selection, training and evaluation. The woman I am working with in ResLife seems like she will be a wonderful resource, and she is really wanting me to get a lot out of the work I am doing. She stressed numerous times that this project would help their office revamp training, but would also be something that would set me apart next year when job searching because of the level of assessment I will be doing. I can certainly get on board with that!

Needless to say, I am extremely excited! The students I am working with (execs. of AOLP) are some of the most invested, motivated and caring students I have ever met. I am really excited to see them work this summer and see the hard work they put in all year pay off. Monday night is our first pre-conference and Tuesday kicks off our first New Student Conference. I have worked with the students the last two days for “intensive training days” which entails a lot of prepping for conferences. They had dinner gatherings on Thursday and Friday, which I’m glad I could be a part of. On Thursday they did a “warm fuzzy” activity in which they each had a canvas with a picture of their group. They were asked to paint something on everyones canvas to leave a mark. I was asked to participate, which was a bit awkward considering I met most of them that day, but it was fun. Here was the end result of my canvas, they did a great job… I love it:

I went for my first bike ride today. I can’t seem to find any bike paths, so I will have to get road riding. I only did 6.5 miles today, but am hoping to do more as I get more familiar with the area. I took a quick picture of Kyle Field on my ride today. My office is right next the stadium (this makes it pretty difficult to get lost, considering the size of the field).