My internship, at Hollar Seeds, ends in a few short days. Throughout the internship, my major projects have been to analyze sales data, train with the financial manager, and help with various tasks around the office. My goals for this internship originally revolved around communication, leadership, and networking. I hoped to be able to comfortably communicate on the phone as my communication goal. I feel that my interactions at Hollar Seeds and tasks involving talking on the phone have definitely helped me attain this goal. I can now pretty much comfortably carry on a business conversation over the phone. As for leadership, I hoped to be able to take control of at least one project, and I did indeed have the opportunity to do this. I was given a data analysis project and was able to take control and charge through it. My last area of improvement, networking, was probably the easiest. I had hoped to gain five key asset community individuals and develop relationships with them that will last for many years. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to do that as well. I’m sure that these relationships will serve me well.
I feel fortunate to have had Ogallala Commons as a backbone throughout my internship. They provide a very unique perspective that has brought a plethora of insight. They care about more than just some random summer job. They genuinely want you to learn skills, develop yourself, and help your community. Not only that but they also want you to work through your problems and relish in your victories. For the most part, they really care about you as an individual. I found that very refreshing.
Overall, I learned a very significant amount during my short 200 hours. the picture below on the left depicts my usual setting for the past several weeks. I generally worked at a computer to complete a variety of tasks. As mentioned above, my major projects have been to analyze sales data, train with the financial manager, and help with various tasks around the office. This has primarily been at a computer. I would gather data from one program and transfer it into another and compare values, over and over again. I also occasionally had other tasks like writing reports or learned how to handle accounts payable. It was very interesting. However, when I was not in the office, I was out in the feild. On a couple different days I had the oppoertunity to go look at some trial plants and put nets around them to make sure they didn’t get cross polinated. Overall, no matter where I was or what I was doing I was learning something new!
