Mission on my Mind

This reflection shows my thankfulness for a moment that had an impact on me for the following two year.

I am an intern at Northpoint Austin this summer where we just got back from our week long student retreat. During our time there it was a whole new experience to see all the behind the scenes work that had to happen to make the experience for our students excellent. For some reason I had not been expecting the craziness to fall upon me, Logistics Coordinator, which was my first faulty expectation. While my team and I were in the midst of the crazy though we stopped to look back at how each of us had gotten to where we were. We were all currently in college giving up a summer of something else to be there. We had all graduated from the same high school and could to connect with students about teachers and the intimate workings of Vista Ridge High. I was there at camp, interning this summer, back at home, because I had signed up for this same camp the night before it started two years ago. I was the kids that made the Logistics Coordinator’s heart skipped a beat with last minute details. I signed up the night before on a whim because of a simple invitation from my childhood best friend. She said it would be the best week of the summer, and it in fact was. It created a sense of belonging, value, and worth inside of me that I hadn’t felt strongly before. It also caused me to return the next year, and the next.

This moment let me see that there is fun in whim decisions. Not only that but they can sometimes make a lasting impression on who you spend your time with, what summer job you take, and what you are overall passionate about. If I had not have made the spontaneous decision to go to a camp I knew maybe three people at two years ago, my summers would not have had as much meaning as they have had. I get to talk, play, and invest in the lives of student’s every day. I get to support the ways we can connect with students by working hard at planning excellent environments for students. I get to be a part of a team that truly shares one goal which is to change these students’ lives. Being an intern has shown me that the people you work with and the effort you put into a common goal creates a lot of satisfaction in the work I do.

Knowing that a common goal and the team I work with directly relates to how I feel accomplishment in my work is helpful going into this fall. I will be at career fair really looking for a job, not simply volunteering at it like I normally do. I will be walking around trying to get a feel for the people I could potentially be working with. To know I value these two things is great because I can simply ask people their views on how their company operates. I can ask them how they usually work in teams and what kind of comradery they feel in those teams. Knowing that most companies go through extensive processes for a focused mission, I can ask what their mission and vision statements. With that I can see if my personal values are and how they would align with those of the company I could start a career in.

#CommLabSummerReflections