This post will be about the work done in the internship.
(John Hume Building, Maynooth University)
As I mentioned in the first post of this series, I was assigned to work in the Graduate Studies Office (GSO) at Maynooth University for 2 weeks. My co-intern was Deirdre, whom I'd never met in person, but we had spoken on the phone once prior to this internship. We both walked in with very little understanding of what our supervisors had in mind for us, but had enjoyed a lovely (if sporadic) phone visit with Eilis, the GSO director a couple weeks before we arrived.
Eilis had given us some basic parameters for our work:
- our work days were to be 10am-4pm
- don't arrive until 10am to give permanent employees a chance to settle into their work each day
- we would have our own office, because
- Eilis was leaving for holiday on our 2nd day and we would work in her office
Other than that, we were basically jumping in head first - and hoping there wasn't a rock at the bottom.
Of course, that first day, Monday, when we went to meet Eilis, there were two problems: 1) she was already in holiday mode and struggled to get everything set up for us that we needed, and 2) I woke up that morning with a scratchy sore throat.
What we did learn from this meeting was that there was a project she had in mind, that Marie would be our point person, and that it involved both graphic design (Deirdre's passion) and curriculum design/professional development (my passion). I was quite impressed with her ability to find something useful for both of us from such a short, interrupted phone call! The problem was, we couldn't quite grasp what the project was -- she kept telling us that "it could be as big or as small as we wanted"... plus, between jet lag and the amount of time it had been since either Deirdre or myself was in Ireland, the accent/slang was a bit of a struggle. I was able to grasp that there was a series of workshops they had already created, that they wanted Deirdre to create marketing tools for a something new, and that they wanted me to help make sure things were in place for these workshops. But that was as much as we gathered... and we learned where the break room was - boy did that tea help with my sore throat!
By Tuesday morning, the sore throat had evolved into a full-blown head & chest cold with cough and "flu-like" symptoms. I ended up in the Student Health Centre on a nebulizer for the first time in my life. [Side note: I have never been so grateful before in my life as I was when I remembered I had thrown my emergency medication bag into my carry on at the last minute... I was almost sent home from the internship because I was so ill, and the only way I survived was with the Mucinex and Tessalon perles in that bag!]. I was unable to even go into the office Tuesday or Wednesday, which left poor Deirdre with even more to handle than she bargained for.
But I went back into the office Thursday morning and was finally able to meet the woman with whom we'd be working most closely during the internship: Marie.
Marie was scattered, frazzled, and more than a little stressed. But when I was able to sit down with her and Deirdre (who, by this point, was getting frustrated with the lack of direction), I got a much better grasp of the big picture! Marie has just recently joined the GSO - coming over from the Research & Development Office (RDO) to help woman the office after it lost nearly 50% of its staff for various reasons. There should have been 7 people in the office, during the time that we were there, there were 4 - 3 of whom were admin assistants, and 2 of these work part time hours. That left Marie and Eilis to run the programming and student affairs side of the entire office, and Eilis was on holiday. Not only was there a staff shortage in an office that was already way smaller than what we would expect in the States, but in the midst of this 2-week internship, 120 students had submitted drafts of essays for the largest national research grant in Ireland (Irish Research Council) and Marie was tasked with reviewing each of them by the 2nd Wednesday we were there... no wonder she was frazzled!!!
(all the places to the right work closely together)
But back to the project at hand: during our sit down (Dr. Ryder had joined us, in part because he needed/wanted to see where we were working, in part because Deirdre had been open with him about her struggles and he wanted to support her - thank you for that!), mostly in an effort to help Deirdre find a sense of direction because I felt like I had left her to flounder alone, I kind of cornered Marie into making a plan for our project. I asked her what - specifically - she wanted to have in her hand by the time we left in 10 days. What would make her life easier by having us here? Deirdre and I both wanted her to know that we could be useful, and that we were there to help.
So the three of us together came up with a plan: Deirdre and I learned that these workshops were not the focus, but rather a piece of a much larger puzzle. There was a new program(me): the Research Skills Development Programme (RSDP) that was a combined effort of the RDO, the GSO, and other areas on campus under the Office of the VP for Research. And there were about a dozen documents, each containing a piece of the puzzle that created this RSDP, but nothing that unified the vision in a way that participants would find useful. So it would be my responsibility to organize and manage the content and Deirdre would create a booklet using InDesign that marketed this new program(me).
Finally! After 3 days of listlessness, and vague understanding, we had a direction! By the end of the day (Thursday), we had an outline of the booklet framed, responsibilities for each of us assigned, and goals for the next few days.
Friday, was a bust, work-wise... Deirdre went to Iceland with 3 other internship ladies and I planned to go into the office, but the illness was rough. It took me 25 minutes to get to work, when it should have only taken me 10-12, because I struggled to breathe, and every time I attempted to exert - even a little - I would go into a coughing fit that I thought would never stop. So I had to take everything *really* slowly... and, after my 25-minute walk to the Hume Bldg, I arrived to find the elevator was under maintenance. I waited another 15 minutes or so before phoning Marie from the lobby to let her know I was in the building, but there was absolutely no way I was able to climb three flights of stairs in my condition. So I offered to "work from home", and she was okay with that. I managed to go through a couple spreadsheets and consolidate them into a chart that would make sense to participants before taking my own weekend excursion down to Tralee (see post #2).
(Deirdre training one of the Admin Assistants on InDesign)
Week 2 went MUCH more smoothly... now that we had a plan, we were able to just make it happen! By Monday, we had a complete draft one of an 18-page booklet for Marie to review. She seemed truly impressed, which made me feel like we had accomplished our goal of providing something useful. We had a meeting with Marie and the director of the RDO, Carol, to review the draft and identify necessary revisions. They suggested that we include more workshops, including two new ones they had not yet created, and a certification provided by Maynooth University's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). Then they sent it out to others for both feedback and to offer a collaborative opportunity for other programs to join.
It was during this meeting that I realized just how helpful Deirdre and I actually were: when Carol printed off her copy for review Monday afternoon, the VP of Research was standing there; she showed him her copy of the draft booklet and he immediately decided that he was presenting it to his meeting with the University Board and President the following week. They were all so happy to see their plan coming into fruition with something tangible. Additionally, Marie and Carol agreed that hard copies of this booklet would be provided to each incoming research PhD student at orientation and made available electronically for PostDocs and Level 3 & 4 researchers, as a reference of the research-related professional development opportunities provided by Maynooth University.
I don't know if you know what it feels like to create something tangible that genuinely improves the lives of real people - but I hope that you do, because that's what this felt like for me. In creating this booklet, Deirdre and I were able to contribute to something transformative: breathing life into the RSDP and making it something with remarkable utility value. That was a big deal to me.
In addition to the booklet, Dr. Ryder reminded me that I have a unique set of skills that might be helpful for Marie: essay assessment. As a literature professor, assessment of essay writing skills is a huge part of my skill set. So I offered to help Marie in her review of 120 IRC draft essays and was able to comb through about a half-dozen on Tuesday and Wednesday, while Deirdre was making revisions in InDesign. Below is a list of other contributions I made while interning in the GSO:
- Multiple meetings with the Director of the Research Development Office (RDO) to understand collaborative relationship with GSO
- Provided edits for a Fulbright scholarship
- Created Google forms for RSDP workshop registration
- Devised course descriptions for two new modules the GSO will offer
There were several ways in which I have grown during my time in this internship, regarding skills, knowledge and/or abilities, many of which may be inferred in my above narrative. I would also like to explicitly take this time to note that, while proficient at InDesign myself, I was incredibly impressed with Deirdre's skill & ability, and I learned more from watching her work in 2 weeks that I probably would have taking an actual course on the InDesign program. My learning happened threefold in this internship: through practice, through networking, and through community-building. I will take this with me long after the internship ends.
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