Current student Sophia Truex shared the following about being an intern at On the Level…
How did you find this internship?
When I was searching for internships, the first place I checked each week was the Environmental Studies newsletter (ENVS Weekly). They have an undergraduate opportunities section, and I found On the Level there.
What did you enjoy most about your internship?
While I enjoyed many different aspects of this internship, I had a lot of fun writing the newsletter articles. Each week we sent out a newsletter, and over the summer I wrote nine features. There are three categories of the OTL newsletter, including Movement Monday (which highlights current climate events and actions), Climate Culture (which pulls together pop culture and climate change), and my personal addition to the newsletter: Friday Features, in which I met with other climate groups and highlighted their work. This not only enriched my understanding of the breadth of the climate movement, but also offered me an opportunity to make connections between the environmental movement and my everyday life. I wrote a few articles of each of the three categories, and enjoyed learning more about climate actions.
What did you find challenging?
One challenge I faced while working as a summer intern was the fact that the job was fully remote. This meant that I was not able to meet face to face with my supervisors, and I was also the only intern. This was challenging because I enjoy working hands-on with people, but it also allowed me to grow in my independent work habits and understand what a future remote job might look/feel like.
What advice would you offer to someone who wants to make the most of an internship like yours?
One piece of advice that I would offer others in internship positions is to speak up about the information and knowledge you hope to gain by the end of the internship. While my supervisors had already built specific skills into the summer plan that they wanted to teach me, I also expressed interest in diving deeper into topics such as website building, social media, and coding in python, since those were things I am interested in. I wanted a foundation for those skills in the future, and my supervisors were happy that I took initiative and asked for their help and advice. Additionally, I kept a document where I wrote down the skills and topics that I learned about each week, which was helpful in my end-of-internship presentation and in updating my resume.
