Week 2: Getting Organized

The second week of my internship has been fairly quiet, but Dr. Snyder set up a meeting with me and my fellow-intern Stephen for next Monday. We will meet over Zoom, and, although I suspect that both Stephen and I took the same online course last semester, we did not get a chance to interact much, so I am very excited to meet him. I am also very glad that I have a teammate in this internship as it will help both of us to get a better sense of effective teamwork, specifically in teaching. Though communication and transparency are universal ingredients for a functional team, I suppose there are certain skills that are unique to the field of education.

This week, I also decided to use the spare time I had to organize and plan the schedule of my other responsibilities, such as my classes and part-time job. I tried to make sure that there would be no surprises moving forward and I would always be able to dedicate enough time and effort to each task. Every work week is different, and while one week can be quiet, the next can leave you overwhelmed, which often results in a poor performance, so being aware of important deadlines helps to structure the workload in a way that no commitment comes at the expense of others.

Speaking of other commitments, in the classes I take this summer I have already started reflecting on my learning experience through the lens of this internship and began paying closer attention to the ways I learn and the repeated mistakes I make. Especially with mistakes in my writing, I noticed that I tend to repeat them over and over again if I seek answers only in one source or explore the subject only superficially to quickly find an answer to the particular difficulty I have at the moment instead of studying it. Even if the source’s method of delivery works for me (I am a visual learner), I tend to repeat the same mistake whenever I do not delve deeply into the subject. Last semester, one of the previous interns at the History Lab pointed out to me one of such gaps in my writing and helped me address it not by using specific examples within my paper but by revisiting the fundamental rules that I had to myself apply to that paper but also could then apply to the future assignments. This week, whenever I noticed any uncertainty, I dedicated time to finding the foundation, the theory behind my potential mistake and thinking of how I could explain it to myself without focusing on the specific examples in front of me.

I also had a chance to appreciate the benefits of keeping this blog as Dr. Gannon, my internship instructor, had already provided me with a helpful insight on choosing my future specialization. Last week, I mentioned that I was still considering which period or geographic area to focus on, and Dr. Gannon suggested taking advantage of my previous academic experience as a construction engineer student and exploring the history of technology. I am currently attending Dr. Walters’s History of the Future class, which is a great place to test my interests in the history of invention and technology, so I am very glad and grateful that Dr. Gannon’s suggestion came with such perfect timing!

I look forward to whatever the next week will teach me.