What Is LINK?
As a junior at AHS all juniors get the opportunity to choose a place to try to get an internship and intern there for 3 weeks. We had to get 90-120 hours. We must finish a project or projects during the 3 weeks. I decided I wanted to intern at Big Brothers Big Sisters, it's an organization to get mentors for kids, they host events for the kids and their mentors.
LINK Project
I had multiple different projects I did. one of them project was to set up a clinic for the Bigs and littles to do together. One was a banana pass game where they had to pass a banana with their feet to a person behind them while laying down, unfortunately I couldn't do this one. And the other one was called landmine, the game is someone is blind folded and had to be guided through a bunch of stuff through someone else voice. Here are a few pictures with me and the littles. I was only really with them because I was the one who set up the activities they did with their Bigs. But unfortunately a decent amount of them were sick most days and none of the Bigs showed up so it was just me and one little on the second week Tuesday and then the third week Tuesday it was me and 2 Littles. On the third week I was then going to try to have more fun involved I was going to let them have a watermelon doge-ball fight. But so little of them showed up and it was also a little cold. A lot of thought went into this, and I was hoping the little's would have learned more about effective communication and collaboration from the activity I was going to have them do. The second one was organizing a bunch of different numbered golf balls starting from one going all they way up to five hundred thirty. It was for their big swing event, they drop all the golf balls out of a helicopter and whatever one lands nearest the cup wins. People pay for each numbered ball so I had to make sure that the golf balls don't duplicate or are missing. I first organized them by hundreds, then went through each box and put the golf ball in bags that went up by fifties. It was super time consuming and I had to be super patient for it. The third and final project was organizing a potluck graduation party for the high school Bigs. I had to make a spreadsheet of all the materials, find all the stuff we needed for it online to get the estimated price, make the RSVP list, and the info graphic they were gong to put on their social media of the event.
Reflection
Skills I had coming into LINK that were useful were being good with kids. On the second week I was going to do the clinic and it was just one Little, his name was Alex, me and him got along really well. If there was something he wanted to do and it was safe it would do it with him. I was super patient with him, engaged with his imagination, took extra safety precaution when we played, and me and him had a decent amount in common so whatever he wanted to talk about I probably knew about it so id talk about whatever he wanted to. This was useful because I was with little kids throughout the week and I had to know safety measures for the kids, had to keep them engaged, and how to engage with them. But since my lessons didn't really workout I took away that The most useful skill I developed from LINK was time management. Throughout the day at my internship I had to distribute what I was doing throughout the day into parts and spend a specific amount of time on it to make sure I got my stuff done for the day. And this was helpful because it would keep me on track and sometimes I would finish early because of it. I grew by getting more comfortable stepping outside of my comfort zone, for example, I had to ask businesses if they would be willing to help participate in scavenger hunt, and had to ask a pizza place if they were willing to give some free pizzas. I was just a bit nervous to do this out of fear of being told no, and I did get no’s but it wasn't that bad. More places should definitely accept more high school students for an internship. It gives them a great opportunity to grow as a person, figure out what they want to do after high school, and give them job experience. This didn't help me figure out what I want to do for college or a career future but it did give me the idea to become a mentor, and I definitely think there should be more mentors around because it could really change a kid's life.