By: Vanessa Beltran
My internship this summer was amazing and very fun but at the same time very tiring. The highlights of my internship were that I got to help in many things that I have not done before and I got to participate in many different activities. My main projects were the County Celebration and Rodeo and helping with everything. We had a summer reading program for 6-7 weeks and during that, we picked out a book, made a healthy snack related to the book, and then made a craft and played a game that got the kids moving. We would do this in our town library every Wednesday each time we had about 15-20 kids show up and have fun with them. We also had photography practices. In these practices kids could show up and we would go around town to different places and take pictures to enter them in the photography contest. We did these practices for about 3 weeks once a week. This helped all of the kids take great and cool pictures for them to enter in the contest,and it also gave them experience with a camera. We had Caprock County Camp at the State park in Quitaque. My internship partner and I helped with water games. We planned 3 games for the camp for all of the kids to play. We did the water in the cup, duck-duck-goose with water, and water balloon sheet volleyball. These games entertained all of the kids for about 50 minutes and gave them a lot of exercise. We then had another 4-H camp in July. The Roaring Springs Camp is a very fun camp that kids can pay to go to and have fun with many other kids from different counties. I helped with the water trailer at the camp and that trailer helped kids see the effect of water on the environment. I also helped with taking care of the kids while we were all at the pool, and making sure they were safe during that time. I also helped a lot at the office in general our extension agent was about to have her baby and she needed a lot of extra help with work. We helped make a calendar that was sent out to all the families in our community and I helped make fliers for tickets we sold for our rodeo and celebration and helped make the newsletters every month for the families in the community. We also had to check our community garden almost every day and water it and in the end, we did have some produce. I also went to exercise at the senior citizenship building and there we did some exercises with the older women we did that every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the week. I also helped twice with the High Plains Food Distribution which helped me realize how many people are in need of food. My main project was the County Celebration and Rodeo I worked more than 40 hours that week although I’m very glad I got a lot of hours that week I was also very tired and stressed! We made the food for the rodeo and cleaned all of the arena and rodeo grounds and cleaned all the bathrooms. A struggle was cleaning and washing the donor signs we had for the rodeo. It was a struggle because there was a lot of wind those days and they would keep blowing away and getting dirty. Although it was a very busy week, I had a great time! My goals in my first blog were very good and I think I did a good job at completing and trying my best to achieve them. I communicated very well by the end of my internship. I had my harvest ceremony with my other internship partner and we did that together. Even though we were doing it together we each spoke a lot and communicated to all of the teachers of the school we presented it. My leadership was achieved because I was a leader to a lot of kids in different parts of my internship. I was a good example to them and communicated with them whenever they needed help or had a question. My personal network expansion goal was achieved because I got to speak to a lot of new people and expand my network with people. Even though my internship was a lot of work I enjoyed it very much and had so much fun with the experienced that I had to do! I’m glad that I got the opportunity to do this and to have another intern with me to help each other! I loved everything about the internship and how I got to help other people.
