NETWORK 98, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 1998

Amanda Kims, Intern Reflections

Amanda Kims, Northeast Center Intern from Fall 1997

  From the moment I walked into the office of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, I knew that my internship would be a valuable experience. I have learned many things since that day, most importantly, how jobs in the real world work. Another rewarding aspect was that I expanded my writing abilities, gaining skill in producing different kinds of articles than I am used to in my college courses. But the thing that will stick in my mind most of all is that I was able to cut it out in the real world. I didn't have the security of professors looking over my shoulder. Instead, my supervisor, Eileen Zuber, and the director, Dr. Daryl Heasley, mainly left me to fend for myself and treated me not as a student, but as an employee. I was given a lot of freedom and sometimes even set my own deadlines. However, with freedom came a lot of responsibility. But I worked hard to get things done to my satisfaction and therefore I got a lot out of the experience.

   I was assigned three articles for the semester, one of which was a large research project on a life skills training pilot program that had been done in Pennsylvania. I had written research papers for classes before, but they didn't involve half as much research as this article did. I spent the first month doing research on the different counties and towns that the pilot had been done in, and also researched statistics and trends concerning drugs and alcohol in rural areas. Surprisingly, this information did not appear at my fingertips. I became extremely resourceful on the web; when I hit a dead end, I would try to think of new directions to take. I also spent more time in the library in that one month than I normally do in one whole semester. But in the end I had a fairly good hold on what the different areas were like, their demographics, geography, and history. I also became very knowledgeable on the subject of drugs and alcohol and learned some things I hadn't previously known.

  Writing the article was a different story. I had a very large packet of information on the program, written by the principal investigators, Drs. Timothy Rollins and Edgar Yoder. However, I needed to get information first hand, and the packet did not answer all my questions. The article needed to be personalized, so therefore I would have to interview many different people. I had only conducted interviews a couple times in my life prior to this, so I was pretty green at it. I found though, that I was fully capable of writing good questions and Eileen and Dr. Heasley were willing to put in their suggestions to make them even better. One example of my questions was, "What were your underlying hypotheses or main goals when designing the program and are they the same now since the pilot?" But the actual interviews were hard to schedule. If there is one thing I learned about interviewing, it is that people are hard to reach. I first tried e-mailing the principal investigators, even sending them the questions to look over. But by the end of September, I still didn't have any interviews and I was extremely frustrated. I kept calling though, and finally, by November I had an interview set up with Timothy Rollins. I failed to ever get a hold of Edgar Yoder and this taught me how inaccessible some people can be. However, once I had the chance to speak with Dr. Rollins, he gave me his full attention for an hour and I obtained a wealth of information from him, as well as the names of other people to contact.

   The rest of the interviews weren't so easy either. I had to talk with the teen and adult leaders of the project. All of the adults were school teachers and I had to contact a lot of them, as well as most of the teens at night. I had no speaker phone at my apartment which made it impossible to tape some of the interviews. Because of this I learned to ask people to talk slowly and I wrote fast. But this only happened with a few, and most of the interviews I captured on tape. Another problem I faced was that my contact in Philipsburg gave me all of the teens' names, but none of their phone numbers. Most teens don't have their own names in the phonebook. Fortunately, I found one girl's number and that lead me to a dozen other numbers. Interviewing the teens was the hardest thing to do because, unlike the adults, they didn't have a whole lot to say. I would ask a question like "What was the most rewarding aspect of the program for you," and get a one sentence answer. So then I would have to take what they said and ask questions off the top of my head to coax more information out of them.

   In the end, I had enough information to write the article, which was the fun part. I had to take all the stacks of papers and articles and notes and condense them into a five or six page article. With this, Eileen and Dr. Heasley gave me complete freedom to put in what I thought were the important things. This was a big responsibility but I had done my research and really enjoyed compiling it all together.

   My favorite article was a biographical sketch of one of the Center's board members, Dr. Arthur Allen. I didn't have much information about him, but I was able to make up about twenty questions to ask him about his life. I e-mailed these to him, but found that he was an extremely busy person, and couldn't get back to me until October. I was glad I e-mailed him first because he was willing to type out answers to the questions. This gave me a chance to look over his responses and make up another twenty or thirty follow-up questions to ask him over the phone. I not only learned a lot about him, but learned that I had really strengthened my interviewing skills because my questions prompted wonderful and intriguing responses.

   The final article I wrote was a collaboration with the Center's previous intern, Emilie Lorditch. We produced a summary of the seminars at the Galaxy Summit conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. This was an exciting experience because I had the job of a reporter and sat in and took notes at the various seminars. Emilie also reported, as well as presented her home-based business project as a part of Dr. Heasley's seminar on leadership. We had the freedom to decide what to write down as notes and what to put into the article. Also, we learned a lot of interesting information about educational Extension programs.

   There are many skills I will bring away with me from the Center. I can successfully interview people and the biographical interview form is a common form of articles in many newspapers. I feel I was able to give an intriguing insight into Dr. Allen's life and personality. Also, my researching abilities improved immensely and I learned how to compile a lot of information into a short article. My summary of the conference seminars as well as my article on the life skills training program taught me how to write different types of articles than I am normally used to and I hope I will get the chance to write more articles like these.

   The most important things I learned were about myself. I learned that I am able to set and meet my own deadlines through hard work and perseverance. My articles proved to be up to the standards of the Center and showed me that I would someday be able to handle a job. What was really great was that I had produced articles that would be published. But more importantly, the articles were a symbol of all my hard work and effort and will always make me proud.

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