I Won Best Internship of The Year Award (Unofficially)

So by this time, you all may be wondering why I’ve been writing these blog posts all semester. Short answer, it’s part of my job for my internship.

Longish answer, the hope is that by writing these posts, all of you who are interested in OBXFS get a snapshot of just what it is we’re doing over here in the eastern most part of the country. Spoiler alert: it’s some pretty awesome shenanigans.

Anyways, back to my internship. Lindsay and Corey Adams, the internship coordinator at OBXFS, placed me in the perfect internship while I was here. Working under John McCord at the Coastal Studies Institute (CSI), I’ve been spending the semester writing these (hopefully) informational blog posts, press releases for John and for the field site, and recreating the incredibly dated website for CSI.

I’m going to be completely upfront with you. When I found out I was revamping an entire website, I thought these people had lost their minds.

Fun fact: technology hates me. Always has and probably always will.

Luckily, John has been incredibly patient with me and has been super helpful in getting me in contact with people who actually know what they’re doing. So far, it’s been going pretty well with minimal yelling at the computer screen!

 

An awesome part of recreating the website has been interviewing the staff members at CSI and hearing about their research areas so that I can translate their work to specific pages on the site. The people here are absolutely incredible. All of them are involved in an array of projects and they pretty much make me feel like I need to get my life together and cure world cancer or something.

For instance, Lindsay our assistant director, is working on a gulf stream study to see if there’s potential for harnessing the energy of the current and using it as a renewable energy source. How cool is that?!

My hope is to help John finish the website by the end of the year and then launch the final product by January (fingers crossed.) I’m not gonna lie, there’s probably going to do a victory dance when this is over.

Another fun part has been these posts. I’ve actually had a really great time writing, putting my words online, and then hearing that people are actually reading my work. So that you’re reading this right now, whoever you are, is freaking awesome!

John has also been great to work for. The guy is involved in about 20 different things at any given time and he geeks out about stuff as much as I do, which I really appreciate. Except, a lot of his excitement stems from technology so more power to him…

And that is what I’ve been doing here at CSI all semester. It’s a lot of work, it’s been super stressful, but I’ve absolutely loved every second of it. Honestly, working for John and spending the semester doing all of this has made me fall back in love with writing. Papers upon papers at college can get kind of tedious, but writing about what I’m interested in has been…fun. This has been one of the few times where I’ve loved busting my butt day in and day out and not minded the hours spent staring at a computer screen.

At the end of the day, OBXFS has been a dream come true for me. I’m so lucky to have been given the opportunity to do what I’m passionate about. (Insert stepping off my soapbox)

Oh and a huge shoutout to Lindsay, Corey, and John for an awesome semester!

XOXO A Grateful and Happily Exhausted OBXFS Student

Published by

Cinnamon Moore

UNC Inst for the Environment