Almost Done :(

Only two days more of our internships... this has absolutely flown by! The word that I think best describes this experience is fun. This has been incredibly fun. Not including Whitworth-related homework, I haven't had any work to do for my internship outside of being at my internship. The weekends have been free for exploring and hanging out with the other interns and our hosts, the Stones. Last night, we had a donut making party at our house, complete with T-Swift and deep-fried Oreos! Our hosts are seriously awesome. And so is Stacey, for teaching us how to make donuts!

The online exhibition I have been working on is in the process of being edited and published online by our web person! That project has been finishing nicely. The education team (my supervisor and we three interns) got to meet with the Peru team (the ones planning the 2014 Folklife Festival) to learn what cultural themes and festival participants they are planning on for the festival. We now have a better idea of what to include in the children's magazine to which we are contributing.

OH, I now have a readers' card for the Library of Congress! That means I can go into the reading rooms for research or errands that my supervisor sends me on. On Tuesday, we got a tour of the LOC  by a guy from our office who was kind enough to take half of his day to show it off to a few of us curious interns. Besides getting a very informative tour, we even got to go into the beautiful main reading room. In my opinion, the Library of Congress is the coolest place to be in D.C.

Tuesday is our last internship day. My supervisor is having two other interns and I over for dinner that night. My supervisor is AWESOME. She knows a lot about how things work around the Center and in the Smithsonian in general since she has been there for so long. She is very approachable and helpful, and we often discuss things as a team over tea and cookies.

She makes sure we are contributing to the Center in valuable ways but doesn't ever make us feel overwhelmed with work.  I am so happy to have had this placement where I get to use different skills, discover what I am good and not so good at, and learn from seasoned and eager professionals.

I have a lot of people to thank for this experience, both in Spokane and D.C. There have been a few parts of my experience at Whitworth that have made it worth every dime, and this is one of them. How cool is it that I applied within Whitworth to be an intern at the Smithsonian and that they set me up with awesome hosts to live with while I am here? Too cool. I really hope that another group gets to do this!

 

We found a park!