InternshipRatings.com

Anonymous's Rating for "Urban Nutrition Initiative"

My internship provided me with real world experience:

Agree

My internship met the job description I signed up for:

Agree

My internship involved a lot of grunt work:

Agree

My boss positively influenced my internship:

Disagree

I felt comfortable in my work environment:

Agree

There was an established internship program at my company:

Yes

My internship was great for networking:

Yes

My hours were fair and flexible:

Yes

I received a salary / compensation:

No

I received college credit:

No

I received a letter of recommendation:

Yes

Comments

The first thing that I need to say is that I did this internship as a high school student. UNI has many interns, most of whom are in college...They were referred to as "the interns" and given a reasonable amount of responsibility and authority; we were referred to as "the high school students." We (there were two other interns my age) were seen more as potentially helpful, but largely dispensable labor. (Note: the college interns were paid. We were not.) Each staff member chose to interact with us in his own way. Some were fantastic.

While my two co-interns chose to work in the high school program and garden, respectively, I opted to work in the office. I was looking forward to helping rewrite the curriculum that UNI uses during the school year.

The days varied wildly...some days it appeared that no one noticed I was there. (To be fair, some days there were only one or two other people in the office.) Others, half a dozen employees would need me to do various things. I did a lot of standard administrative work (copying, cleaning, organizing, creating databases) as well as a few days' worth of actual work on the curriculum. Those were my favorite days...

Over the course of my month-long internship, I designed the bulletin board for their 14 schools in September and, after reviewing last year's surveys, created new packets for September, October, and November. Each packet is a conglomerate of worksheets and information about the fruit of the month and the monthly theme. (For example, in September, the fruit was the peach, so I used lots of information about stone fruits, and the theme was "Eat a Rainbow," so I wrote up explanations of the benefits of each fruits and vegetables of each color.) I found charts about the fruit production online and wrote questions about them to create middle- and high-school level worksheets. I also found current events related to each fruit and wrote questions about the articles, focusing on standardized testing skills such as determining main idea and synthesizing information.

The internship certainly had its ups and downs, and each day was a surprise. But I would definitely recommend it if you are interested in working for a non-profit organization or education. It was amazing to be a part of an organization like UNI and to see the daily struggles of being a 20-person organization working under federal, state, and district regulations. Although not glamorous, logistics are crucial, and they need to be dealt with day-to-day in such a small organization. That part of the experience was invaluable.

The office environment was warm, and for the most part people were respectful and were willing to delegate some responsibilities to me.

Overall: No internship is perfect. But I got what I came for, and I met some amazing professionals. I got to see how a small non-profit organization is run. Most importantly, I felt like I was a part of that, and that I was valuable.

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