During my internship with the San Dieguito River Park, I've gotten to know some pretty cool people, and have gotten familiar with a very supportive and relaxed work environment. The people there are all highly motivated to work hard and succeed, and it seems like a good place to work. In my research about the field of ornithology, I imagined myself doing research for a university or something like that, but I can see myself working for a national park, and working more in active conservation to protect endangered birds. I still want to pursue ornithology in college, but it's good to know that there are a lot of options out there.
Over the course of my internship, I didn't have a central project or product I was working on. Instead, I worked on many different projects that the rangers work on in their field. In my POL, that was pretty much what I talked about. Included it the link to my POL slides.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vv7zOQsHpHoB0ULRD0CeNnYmm9_FPGipL2WV0hexeeM In my work as an intern at the San Dieguito River Park, I have taken part in many different projects that they have been working on, from large to small. The different projects we worked on were all varied and required many different skill sets. With the many different projects, there is no one way to measure success, as they all have different outcomes and situations. Some tasks don't even have tangible final solutions, like trail patrols which are never finished, while others have very simple physical outcomes, such as trimming brush around trails and separating seeds from berries of native plants for propagation. The benefits from my work have real, concrete, positive effects on not just my growth, but on the environment in genera along the entire San Dieguito River. Our work removing invasives and planting native plants helps to promote native animals and birds, many of which are endangered and threatened. Our work maintaining trails and working with community outreach really helps people see the beauty of the area and what needs to be done to protect it for future generations.
Working as an intern at the park, I have gained a new-found appreciation of the beauty of San Diego's natural environment and all of the work people do to try and maintain it. My work has taken me all over San Diego County to see all of the different environments it has to offer In my time working with the rangers at the San Dieguito River Park, I've found countless examples of myself and the other interns demonstrating their own self-advocacy. With the river park being such a small organization, it's hard for anyone to be swept under the rug or just put up in a cubicle. There are only about 12 people that are on the San Dieguito payroll, plus the hundreds of regular and irregular volunteers, so everyone knows everyone and works together with each other pretty well. The work we do often involves working with some pretty powerful tools, like gas powered weed-whips or hedge trimmers, and could be dangerous to someone who doesn't know what they're doing. The rangers make a point to be sure we know how to operate the tools safely and to ask any questions we have about anything really. The internship structure allows for a great deal of personal freedom, with scheduling specifically, so we all need to communicate with the people we work with to figure that out, and they're always willing to help or even change their schedules to accommodate us. This environment greatly encourages us to advocate for ourselves about anything we would need to.
Some things that I've been doing that are on the list of how to be a memorable intern is getting to know my colleagues, being on time, and always being doing something. I've worked with almost everyone at the river park in the past, so the first part wasn't hard, I just got to know them during the week that I volunteered with them. I'm pretty sure the only reason I got the internship in the first place was because I already had extensive contact with the volunteer coordinator there. Being on time is pretty much self explanatory. I am almost always working on something in the park because there is always work to do, and a lot of it requires a few people, so I can't just not do anything when everyone else is planting or hauling hoses up a hill or anything else we might be doing. Some things on the list that I haven't been doing are carrying a notebook around everywhere, because it is never necessary for what I'm doing, and dressing more professionally than everyone else. We were given river park t-shirts to wear, and I'm not going to be wearing collared shirts when I'm trimming trail or pulling weeds. My internship has been kind of odd compared to what I hear from other people. I don't have a specific project to be doing for the river park, we have just been working with different people in the organization to help them complete different projects that need to be done throughout the park. For example, for the past few days we've been trimming along the trails, and last week we were helping at the Sikes Adobe interpretive center with school field trips. Later this week, I will be helping install gravity-fed irrigation systems to the habitat restoration sites where we've been planting. I will probably need to learn how to set up a system like that so each plant gets an even amount of water, but I'm sure the rangers will offer guidance on the matter. Bonnie has been taking a lot of pictures to help us catalog the different things we've been doing around the park to help us with our presentations. At some point I will probably need to figure out a specific project I could focus on for my POL, but I still have time to figure that out.
Today marks the end of my first week of internship, and I can say that it has been pretty fun. We've been moving around between different aspects of what they do at the river park, from invasive plant control with the field rangers to education at the Sikes Adobe. I don't really have any questions about the internship, my colleagues have been very helpful with answering any questions I might have. The work we did on Tuesday with the dust devils and field rangers reminded me of the work I did earlier in the year with them, because we were weeding the same area that we planted natives in March. Some skills that I've been developing in this internship are identifying invasive plants and how best to remove them, and just the upper body strength involved with digging and pulling plants because some of them have really deep and complicated root structures that require a lot of force to get out of the ground. Hopefully I will learn more about direct gravity-fed irrigation systems like the ones used by the park.
Included is an interview conducted with my mentor, JJ. https://soundcloud.com/dominic-dudley-12576732/jj-interview Today I began my first day interning for the San Dieguito River Project. I've worked with them before for a project, so I already know a lot of the people who I'll be working with. To begin, we met with Leana and discussed our schedule for the rest of the week. We then were given some boxes full of supplies and skulls and sorted them. Afterwards, we pulled some invasive plants from the property and went to the Sikes Adobe site. We will be going to the site to help with a field trip that will happening there on Wednesday.
What strikes me most about the work-space is the sheer size of it. It goes from the Volcan Mountains in Julian to the ocean at Del Mar. We will be working mostly in the Lake Hodges are and in Del Mar. Nothing really struck me about my colleagues, they're the same people I worked with in March. I am excited about getting to work outside and helping with the kids. I feel like this will be a good internship, and a chance to see a lot of birds. I like the environment in San Diego, and am glad that I will have a chance to really help it directly. I am also glad that I will be able to educate people about it as well so they can grow up to appreciate it and help it too. I am most excited about working with the dust devils and the rangers, because that's who I worked with in the past, and I like working with them. I am worried about whether or not it's okay to be working with different people every day. This next Monday, I will be going to the San Dieguito River Park, and will be interning with the rangers there. I will be shadowing under J.J., a ranger who I've worked with before for the change-makers project in Humanities earlier this year. I'm not really sure what I'll be doing exactly, but I can assume I'll be performing in a manner similar to my earlier work with them, doing habitat restoration. I'm excited to be able to get more experience working with the rangers, and hope to be able to work out a schedule where I don't have to wake up too early. I'm worried about how I will be getting a ride to the station, because I totaled my car last month. All in all, I think that this internship will be fun.
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