My Professional Journey Starts Here!

In my last post I talked about my internship and how excited I was for the experience and everything that lay ahead of me. Since then my enthusiasm has not diminished in the slightest. I am just as excited as ever to be given this opportunity for experiencing not only the place that is Colorado Springs, but also the company and the people that I will be working for. So excited, in fact, I have been planning my wardrobe and places that I need to visit once I am actually in this position for probably 12 hours in total this weekend. After dwelling on this for some time I decided that I should be focusing less on what I will wear and more on how I will do the job and how I can make that position as successful as possible. I want to replace the question of “what will I wear?’ with “what will I do to make an impact?” To do this I have decided to go on a journey of talking to people within my university and people whom I know to be successful and try to get as many helpful hints and tips to make my internship a success. I have had the amazing experience of being a part of UT Tyler and being given the opportunity to know members of the university who are very successful and willing still to talk with me and teach me whatever they can. As I have begun to explore I have realized that this internship will require a lot of me. I don’t think that I realized how BIG this was until within the last couple of days. I will be gone for an entire summer. I will turn 21 in Colorado away from my friends and family. I will leave everyone here while I go and explore this new chapter in my journey to become a professional. WAIT!! When did I start this journey? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why am I remarkably close to being a real grown up? Can’t we slow this thing down?!?!  NO! Life is going to continue with or without me. It’s like I am up to bat in a baseball game and  it is my job to take all of these curveballs being thrown my way and just swing away!  No matter how sure or unsure I am about that pitch I just have to swing and hope something good comes from it! So this blog marks the beginning of my professional journey. Let’s do this thing!

The Best Day Ever!

I could seriously jump for joy! Today could quite possibly be the best day ever!!! You may be thinking to yourself “Self, today doesn’t seem very special. What is this girl talking about?” Well, let me tell you! Today is the day that I got an internship with Compassion International! For those of you who are currently asking yourself a new question “Self, what is Compassion International?”  Compassion is a Christian child advocacy ministry which desires to release children around the world from the grips of poverty through education and sponsorship. They currently sponsor 1.2 million children in 26 countries!

 I have been involved with this ministry since high school when I began to sponsor my first child. Since that point my sponsor child has left the program and because I am now a broke college student I could not support another one. I found out in August that Compassion was hiring college interns for the 2012 summer and immediately knew I HAD to apply. Unfortunately I could not apply until December, but even then I could not guess the journey I would go through from that point until now.

First round of tests over

               And boy were they a doozey! I made 2 C's, waiting on one grade, and a 60. So yeah... not super fantastic, but I don't have any of my books and I honestly didn't do a great job of studying, so I'm glad I did as well as I did. But I do know that I will have to put a legitimate foot forward and buckle down. I can’t keep coasting on my brilliance and good looks.
             Eventually I'll have to do something. But seriously, I do need to start learning this information and retaining it a lot better so I can become more of an asset to potential clients/employers. I'm going to continue to research that paid internship and hope for the best. It'd be great to have a job as soon as I graduate so I don't have to worry. I was hoping to get one here at the university, but there's nothing wrong with increasing my options.