In fact, I had really wanted a different internship in Maryland that I didn’t get. I had never been to Delaware and knew virtually nothing about the park. A few days later, I had a phone interview and then got the internship. That’s all I remember, but I put in an application for that park. In the position description, I remember seeing the words “beach” and “kayak tours”. I found a park called “Cape Henlopen State Park”. I clicked over to the Delaware State Parks internship page and quickly scrolled through internships at different parks. Near the end of my senior year of college, I was looking through the job board for the National Association of Zoos and Aquariums and I saw an internship with Delaware State Parks at the Brandywine Zoo in Wilmington, Delaware. I had always wanted to work as a naturalist, and I thought it would be fun to work at a beach, nature center, or zoo for a summer before getting a “real job”. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after graduation, but I didn’t want a real, full-time job. Everyone I talked to thought that was a weird combination of majors, and wanted to know what I was going to do with them. I chose to graduate, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication Design with a supplementary major in Environmental Science. I contemplated staying a 5th year to really round out my design degree. My senior year, I changed my major again from industrial design to visual communication design (graphic design). When I got back to campus, I realized didn’t really want a career in product design, and I was honestly behind in the classes because I switched pretty late in my college career. I learned SO MUCH that summer and had the opportunity to help with the organization’s social media, create graphics, and assist with large marketing campaigns. The summer before my senior year, I took an unpaid internship in the marketing department of the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, a performing arts organization in my hometown. I had enough credits to keep an environmental science supplementary major, but at this point in college, I really dove into design and spent probably about 80% of my time focusing on design classes. I loved being a design major and knew that’s what I wanted to keep doing. That’s me on the far right! This was taken during the summer that I did environmental field research in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.Īfter I got back to campus from that summer, I lowered my environmental science major to a supplementary major, switched from a Bachelor of Science to a Bachelor of Arts, and switched my primary major to Industrial Design. I realized that while I liked nature, I did NOT want to do field research. The summer after my sophomore year, I spent a summer doing field environmental field research in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. I still liked nature, so I kept the environmental science degree, but added a minor in industrial design (aka product design), and stopped the pre-med track. I wanted to help people, but I realized I could do that in other ways besides being a doctor. Around my sophomore year, I realized that I really missed art and creativity, and I didn’t actually like science enough to continue the pre-med track and go to med school. I went to college at the University of Notre Dame where I started by majoring in environmental science with the intention of going to medical school. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and I always really liked nature, art, and animals. I expected to be in Delaware for 13 weeks, and 4 years later, I’m still here! It has been a wild and wonderful four years since I entered this state for the first time! Today, I’m going to tell you the story of how all of that happened, and how I got to where I am today. In less than two years, I went from intern to marketing director at age 24 with no formal marketing training. I took an internship in Delaware right after I graduated college.
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