The internship has come to an end, and I've had some time to reflect on my experience and how it has affected me and who I am now. Before internship I made a post explaining “who I am,” to be honest I had a lot of trouble writing this blog post because I did not know who I was at all and I still don't know who I am. I wrote about random things that I thought made up who I am I ended up just talking about my career and how excited I was about going to internship, and my hopes and dreams following that. As I read the prompt for this blog post I initially thought to myself “it is not possible to change in four weeks due to going to work.” But as I forced myself to reflect on my experience it almost made me emotional to think of everything that working at an environment like the one at Wild Willow farm did to me. The first day of work Cat my mentor said something that really got my attention I can't quote her on this, but what I got from it was that you are going to have to spend a lot of time just you and the plants you'll either go crazy with your own thoughts or fully submerge yourself in this space and treating the plant as your own. I wondered what she meant, I remember looking at Bibi the other intern from High Tech High with a confused look and she was thinking the same thing as me. As the weeks progressed this stayed in the back of my head, but I was so afraid of messing up so the thought of me working hard was always number one. I would work so hard to get everything right but I wasn't doing anything with purpose. I would clear out beds, but thinking about clearing it out fast and not smart. I would plant baby plants placing them exactly how Cat did it and looking at everybody else to compare my planting skills to theirs, but never paying attention to the importance of that baby plant. It was not until the last week where I didn't have to focus on what to do next I already had an idea on what to do to clear a bed, make a bed or clear out weeds whatever it was I knew how to do. I noticed another intern named Julia she would always take off her shoes while working at the field and that day I decided to do it as well to see what it felt like at first it felt odd, but the longer I was like that I felt normal like it was meant to be like that. We then planted baby cucumbers and for once I wasn't focusing on my speed but rather the baby plant and it's future and the purpose it'll have. That day the things we had to do it was mostly Individual work I didn't talk to anyone for the remainder of the day because of how peaceful I was inside I finally felt in tune with the earth I was finally doing something with purpose. I realized that I was someone who claimed they did things with intention, but I never knew what that meant until working at the farm. I became more observant and I was able to find beauty in things again, I was no longer blindfolded.
0 Comments
It is week four of my internship and the last week. I am very thankful that I got the opportunity to work alongside professionals and had a really good insight into what it is like to do agriculture. This last week I got to hear amazing life stories and ate delicious meals prepared by the farmers. As I leave this Internship I hope that my time there was appreciated and I left a mark on the farm. I believe I made a good contribution in the farm by doing various projects which will determine the prosperity of the next crops future. I not only prepared the beds for the crops but I planted them as well. I got the opportunity to plant various crops like cucumbers, beets, arugula, cilantro, and many kinds of corn. In a couple of months these crops will flourish and thrive creating its delicious vegetable or leaves. These crops will then be harvested and sent out to the community to be enjoyed by the buyers. I hope that not only my physical work at the farm made an impact but my will to help as well. I would never complain and would ask helpful questions, I would make observations and share them with other interns to avoid doing stuff wrong, although that wouldn't be such an issue because my mentor would always make it clear that they were there to teach and that mistakes were welcomed. Overall, I am very thankful for all the people that taught me something new every single day or shared a cool experience they had. I had a very good time working at Wild Willow Farm and I hope to come back to visit the plants that I planted and be able to reconnect with everyone there. I am grateful for this experience.
This week there were a lot of eventful moments there was a bee attack, the farm cat ran away, and the most memorable I got rammed by a goat. The first thing that happened was on Friday of last week, it was a semi normal morning but I had a weird feeling something was going to happen considering that saturday was going to be a full moon. Since me and another intern are in charge of feeding the goats my mentor thought it would be a good idea to teach us how to fill the tub of water they have inside the pen. She gave us a few pointers on what to do if they came at us, “hold them by their horns and steer their energy somewhere else, make sure you show your dominance.” I thought it would be easy we go in and I try to do just that... I end up with a twelve inch bruise on my thighs from the goat coming at me full force and me not being able to process how strong this goat was. It was such a memorable experience, at the moment I thought I was going to die (although that would be a pretty funny way to die), but after it was hilarious we couldn't stop laughing at the encounter I had with the goat. After that I thought it would be a good idea to start working on my relationship with the goat by petting her through the fence and feeding her everyday.
It has officially been two weeks since internship started and I've managed to build new friendships with the other interns and started gaining more trust with my mentor. Considering me working here for two weeks I have realized that the people working here are so physically and mentally strong. Being physically strong is crucial here considering how much you use your whole body for many hours, but the workers and interns are really open about their mental health which in my opinion makes them really strong to be so vulnerable. I have also noticed how self-less and down to earth they are, I mean if you are interning at a farm you must have those attributes in your personality and I think through them I have realized that I have those characteristics as well. Every individual at the farm has their own reason for working there and they all have to do with making a difference in the world and truly believing that being close to the earth is healing and powerful. This week my coworker and I made a big mistake causing my mentor to get really upset , she yelled at us but shortly after she apologized I was genuinely shocked on how forgiving she was with us I have never in my life met such a compassionate and kind person like her she made me feel better about the whole situation which I am really thankful for. Throughout the next two weeks left working at Wild Willow Farm I hope to gain this new perspective of the earth through farming and learning from the people who have been here longer. I want their good vibes to rub off on me, I crave their happiness and worry less personality!
This week I started my Internship at Wild Willow Farm educational farm. What stroke me the most about this first week at work was how beautiful the farm is. At first glance it just looks like a bunch of disorganized plants and dirt and my brain tricked me to ignore it because it was “ugly” it did not deserve my attention. Later in the week my mentor explained to me the variety of plants they had at the front of the farm, it was a large variety of culinary herbs like oregano and mint. I was struck to find this out because of how I ignored them, yet these herbs are so common and important in our culinary world. Another thing that surprised me was that at the farm they do everything together and everybody goes at the same speed. I was working with other interns meaning we were all learning and learning from each other, and our mentors did a good job at including everyone.The community there is truly inspiring everyone is on the same wavelength, there seems to be some sort of brotherhood because everybody was so open with one another. Sharing music, stories, food and more, I am truly excited to be part of a community like this were everybody has your back. The last thing that truly made an impact my first week here is the amount of work the farmers do, it is truly insane. I thought I knew what hard work looked like, but they still manage to look genuinely happy I was confused on why they weren't in a bad mood considering it took us 5 hours of physical labor plus working out in the hot sun. I can not wait to see what the future holds here at Wild Willow Farm.
“This is not about careers. It’s not even necessarily about your greatest interest. Internship is about becoming something else; enlarging our sense of self.”
In my last week before my internship, I am reflecting on HTH co-founder Rob Riordan’s quote on internship. I think Riordan is trying to express the importance of being able to step away from your own self and be able to be part of something greater a community. Being able to do something for a community is working on something with your focus on “How is this going to benefit others?” there should always be a purpose to what you are doing or contributing to. I will be doing what Riordan wants us to experience during my internship time at Wild Willow Farm. They are a Non-Profit educational farm that encourages bio-cultural diversity. There goal is to share experiences that will “nurture self- empowerment and inspire to connect to food, land , and each other.” They are constantly finding ways to give back to the community and the earth. They host several classes to the public for free on how to cultivate your own garden and teach special needs kids the importance of seeds and growing your own food. Not only that, But they host different events for the community on weekends right there on the farm to spread their love of agriculture. Serving to the community will help me reflect on my previous work and future, seeing how much the work I will do during internship will impact people's lives. My skills of communication and self-advocacy will hopefully come to my advantage to be able to reach out to the community and share with other people the importance of reconnecting yourself and feeling empowered. Before I state my skills I have to give a huge thank you to High Tech because if it weren't for this amazing school I don't think I would have acquired these skills. My top two skills have to be communication and teamwork. Being in this school you are constantly being tested on teamwork because it is a PBL (project based learning) school. This skill is very important especially in the future in a work environment it is vital that you know how to work with other people and avoid conflict having this skill has also made me problem solve faster and work on organization which ties in with time management especially if you are the leader in the group you need to be quick on your feet and exchange the work evenly and get a good quality product at the end. In order to do all that communication is key knowing how people learn and work best is the way to go. Constantly having people from around different parts of the world visit our school has also helped with my professionalism and knowing how to act in certain situations. I hope to be able to express these skills that I have acquired over the years to my advantage.
My ultimate goal in life is to be successful meaning being able to not only sustain myself but surpass that and have extra money to spend, but at the same time staying humble and happy, keeping my family close and traveling around the world. Career wise I want to become a wildlife veterinarian and have my own clinic and animal sanctuary. I want to give back to the ecosystem by protecting and healing animals enough to make a difference. I also hope to make my family proud with my life choices and for them to feel at peace with me being able to give back to them for everything they have sacrificed for me. My dream is to be well known in the world at least in the US. For animal enthusiasts to recognize me as a well respected doctor. But in order to reach that level of greatness I must reconsider some habits I have right now for example I leave "less" important work until the last minute than I realize that I should have done it sooner. I also need to be more organized with my work I tend to lose papers and not know where they went even though "I could've sworn I put it in my backpack." I know I must change those habits because they do not benefit me in any way shape or form if anything they hold me back from succeeding at school. I am currently working on them by making little changes like using a planner, and setting my school priorities straight. I will continue these new habits for internship to help me through the whole process. I feel very excited to experience hands on work while gaining as much knowledge from the mentors and coworkers around me.
This week in class I felt really overwhelmed due to the chaos around getting all of our items ready for critique at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I had to finish a prototype of my piece which is a clay face sculpture and it definitely took longer than expected so that caused some delay in other work I had to do. On the bright side Luisa (the one critiquing our work) really liked our pieces and seemed to be interested on how it would come out at the end. We also had a socratic seminar talking about recent topics in our classroom mostly about the teenage brain and stigma around mental health disorders. I didn't share because I didn't feel prepared to, But it was really cool hearing people's point of views on the questions and how different the conversations where from our class compared to the morning classI know there was a leading question about teens and how we have revolutionized mental health and we brought up social media while the other class talked about something completely different. Two of the questions I will take away from the socratic seminar are “As a group of teens, what can we do to reduce teen brain health stigma?” and “How can learning about the brain help me learn about myself?” i chose these two because I truly didn't know how to answer them and I believe these are very important questions.
This week in class we turned in our first draft of our research paper! To be honest I did not turn in a good draft I was so busy with other things like my other projects and work from other classes that I paid no attention to it I still have a long ways to go, but it is okay because it is our first draft no one expects them to be great. My critique was very useful my critique partner was very clear on including more evidence to back up my commentary and making it less choppy and adding more of my own style into it while still keeping it professional. I feel like this essay is a very valuable piece in this whole project which is advocating for mental health disorders. I will keep the importance of this project in mind when writing my next essay and bringing justice people with mental health disorders. The topic I am advocating for is Anxiety I chose this topic because it is super personal to me. Never did I think I would be bringing this daunting topic back to the surface not only is this project important to inform other people on brain health, but in some way its healing some open wounds I had because i'm informing myself on how to cope with it in a positive way and be vulnerable enough to get help if I ever need it.
|
|