This week was the final week of the internship. Unlike most endings, it was not emotional or tragic. As I have exhaustively mentioned, I never saw the internship as a finite process, rather a stepping stone to something new. With that being said, let's take a look at what happened during the "official" final week of the internship.
The week started off with reactions to my podcast segment that was published last Thursday/Friday. These reactions ranged from family to friends, to also people that were highly involved in this process. The interviewee himself, Dr. Mormino, gave me his two cents on what he thought about the piece. He said, "I thought the program was done very professionally and beautifully." Among other things he told me in that email, receiving that type of feedback for something I worked so vigorously on for the past 12 weeks, makes what I was able to produce and the entire experience in retrospect all the more sweeter and rewarding. On Tuesday (8/2), Holly herself congratulated me once again, and gave me her feedback on the segment, calling it "GREAT" and her being proud of me and the hard work I gave during the 12 weeks.
Once the amazing feedback and reactions I received ended, the week shifted to a more outlook approach. This started with Jon, who also emailed me on Tuesday, stating that he mentioned my expressed interested in continuing to create more radio show content during their morning staff meeting. He told me that Dr. Brotemarkle was on-board with the idea (which is what we were waiting on from last week), and that I can start thinking of ideas for a next segment. He also told me that if I don't want to edit the segments myself, that he is more than happy to do it for me. I'd just have to send him the raw audio files with edit notes and that's it. He also wanted me to share my blog, so personal shoutout to Jon! I replied a couple hours later stating how great it was to receive this news, while also expressing my appreciation for him forwarding my interest in continuing to produce more radio podcast content for them. I told him, I don't mind editing my own segments, as I find it being good practice, but it'll just depend on how much time I have and making sure my segments don't take 11 weeks to publish. It was my first rodeo, and I was under the infrastructure of the amazing UCF internship program (shoutout to all the staff that were part of the internship program this summer! This includes my awesome internship instruct and weekly reader Dr. Gannon, thank YOU!), so it was reasonable that it took almost 11 weeks to produce a segment. However, I would want to produce multiple segments in my continuation with them, so if that means I have to sacrifice the audio editing I will do so. Jon replied back to this email thread the following day, stating he is looking forward to receiving more segments from me. The feeling is highly mutual!
I forwarded all of this information to Holly, giving her updates about my conversation with Jon, while also giving her my final evaluation form, which was due today. Continuing with the theme of outlook to the future, Steve Noll, whom Dr. Mormino told me about the day of the interview, emailed me on Saturday, stating that Dr. Mormino had mentioned me to him for a potential interview. As of today, I have not responded because I have to focus on finishing this internship first, and then I can legitimately start planning my next potential segment. Moreover, I want to run this through Holly first during a Zoom meeting we are planning to have next week.
To put an "official" end to the internship, today was the "End-of-Semester Internship Showcase" event hosted by the UCF History Department (the picture of this week's blog!). I prepared my presentation in small pieces throughout the week (I had to prioritize finishing a class that also ended this week), but really put the biggest and final touches on Thursday, once I was officially done with that class. I was the first intern out of 13 to present, and I just spoke from the heart. I had a structure to prevent myself from going way past the time limit, but I mainly spoke about the highlights of my internship experience, the skills I learned, the challenges I went through, and how ultimately it was the most rewarding experience of my life to date (think of it like a cool YouTube montage of all these blogs put together). I want to give a shoutout to all the people that attended today's event, including Dr. French who initially helped me formalized the internship back in early May. I also want to give a shoutout to all the other interns that presented today, their work and experiences were just as fascinating as my own, and to see other history nerds presenting their passion is enlightening, refreshing, and motivating to see. Lastly, I want to give a special shoutout to my mom and my dad who also attended the event to watch me present. I know at time their schedules can make things like attending today difficult for them to do, so with all my heart, I appreciate you----mom and dad----for going, it means the world to me.
Once the event ended at approximately 1:20 pm, I decided to take a break before commencing on the final remaining tasks I had left for the internship. First, it was writing the final reflection paper that Holly had tasked me to do when I went to do my narration on 7/18. The only requirements were that it had to be 3-5 pages, and I had to talk about my experience/skills I learned. That's easy to do, that's what I have been doing this whole time with these blogs! Again another cool YouTube montage moment. Once I finished that, I emailed it to her and thank her for attending the event today and for saying such kind things about me to the audience, I really appreciated that. I also asked her for a confirmation date about our potential Zoom meeting next week. The final task was writing this blog! I briefly mentioned in my presentation today, how much I really enjoyed writing these blogs. I enjoy writing and also love looking back at my experiences, and these blogs do both! The inspiration for this week's title is not only because I have presented "sneak peeks", if you will, of what's the come for me in this same role, but also because I have been thinking about continuing doing these blogs. I don't know if I would do it as I continue with my experience with the FHS, or as its own thing, or both. I don't know yet. What I do know, is that I enjoyed writing them and I see a value in them that I am leaving the door open for a potential return. For anyone that has read these blogs since Week 1 (Dr. Gannon!), or if this your first time reading one, I appreciate every single one of you, and I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did writing them. And, (oof we are really getting "bloggy" starting a sentence with "and") for any future or current UCF history student reading this, I highly recommend doing the history internship program at UCF. It would be a mistake not to do it, and if you have read all or most of my blogs, you know when I write it, I mean it. I was lucky enough to find an internship that best filled my specific niche and interest I would want to continue in my career, but as Dr. Gannon said today in the event, just do the program and even if the experience turns out being something you didn't like, that is just as significant because there will be instances in one's professional career where things won't panned out the way you'd expected or hoped for, and already going through it, prepares you for the next possible time. I agree.
It has been such a pleasure to write these blogs during the past 12 weeks. Again, I appreciate every single one of you that at some point have read them. One thing I am certain of doing with this site in general, is as I produce more segments for Florida Frontiers, I will provide the links to my segment on this site. I'll make a new section in the website with all of the episodes that feature my segments, with the time code of where it starts included. So, if you enjoyed the segment I was able to produce during my internship, keep an eye out for this website, as I'll keep uploading my future segments here.
I am proud that I was able to achieve all the goals I set out for myself in the beginning of the internship, from producing a high quality segment about a case study of immigration history in Florida, to making invaluable relationships and networks with multiple people, to using this internship as a stepping stone to continue my relationship and work with the incredible staff at the Florida Historical Society.
Biggest advice: do what you love, and you'll see how enjoyable the experiences will be and how many doors will start opening, even ones you don't expect from the beginning.
As always, thank you for reading, and *potentially* see you soon...
SG