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Week 1
Pre-Internship Expectations
One of my fears is that I'm expecting to be nervous and warming up to people would be difficult since I don't want to give off a bad impression. I am hoping for at least a couple of site visits while I'm at my internship this month. My dream for this internship is to be able to enjoy this experience to the fullest by using all the opportunities I am given.
Purpose of Internship
Something that surprised me during my first week at my internship is that my mentor on the first day allowed me to go on a site visit in Del Mar. This surprised me so much since I didn't think I would be able to go and help out in the field until later on in the internship. I think that it would've been a good experience for me to have but unfortunately, the time to go there was at 6:30 in the morning which was too early for me.
I became familiar with the culture of my workplace quickly, it's made up of meetings on the Microsoft Teams app that I'll be using every day. In the space where I work at my desk, there are two sets of four desks that are all connected with a laptop and two monitors each, people around the office call it the fish bowl. When I go on my lunch break I usually bring my lunch but if I'm still feeling hungry there is food in the fridges with some labeled which is not to be touched and community snacks I can enjoy.
Week 2
Biggest Challenge
The biggest challenge I had to face this week was coming up with an idea for my internship project. However, it was later resolved by going to a Microsoft Teams meeting with my mentor to discuss what I already had. During this meeting, my mentor and I came up with some ideas for the Sticky Notes app. We also talked about different project ideas like the one I picked which is a brush and fire management research project.
Project Summary
My final project I will be researching brush and fire management research. The focus is on making strategies for mitigating fire risks and developing resilience in communities using ecological planning. This will go into depth about how thoughtful ecological design can reduce fire vulnerability which will contain post-fire building efforts improvements. Three key sections are ecological planning choices, fire-resilient communities, and rebuilding for resilience. This project will benefit Great Ecology by having a detailed research project on fires that are currently relevant to the company due to the LA forest fires.
Week 3
Social Environment at the Workplace
Whenever I come to the internship I walk over to my desk and I'm greeted by some fellow interns or coworkers who work near me who say good morning. I've noticed that the other employees don't really socialize with each other unless they are working on an assignment with one another or taking their lunch break. Everybody here has many assignments and projects to work on so they are more working on their things. So far, I think I won't be involved much this month in collaborative work since I'll be focused on my internship project most of the time. The way Great Ecology's social dynamic works is that if people are super off task and can't meet the required deadlines it'll slow down the company.
Mentor Interview Highlights
A quote that highlights the interview is, "Back to Hurricane Katrina in 2007, these have been happening more and more and it with more intensity as time goes on and I think it is kind of a wake-up call for a lot of areas to be". This quote is important since it's a pattern of how those hurricanes will become even more uncontrollable in the following years. Another quote I found interesting was, "It can also be challenging because you're often the middleman and a lot of the middle person in a lot of situations where you know you're working with a municipality and a private client and you are the go-between, so there can be a lot of conflicts". This shows that there is more than just one challenge to being involved with consulting.
Week 4
Future Junior Internship Advice
Somethings to remember while at this internship is to first make sure that you have your timesheet somewhere safe like a folder in your backpack. If you're given any possible site visit opportunities take advantage of all of them unlike me which I missed the first one. While in your internship you should get used to the tools you will use when you're here like OneNote or Sticky Notes. Get familiar with how you will use your Teams and Microsoft Outlook calendar. Whenever you make a project or have important files you need saved make yourself an intern employee folder to store all those important documents. Don't forget to take your lunch before the 5th hour you work, nobody will remind you if you forget. If allowed to go on a site visit take the chance you'll learn a lot about whatever place you visit and how it's important, like how I went on an Aviara Site Visit during my fourth week.
My Mentor's Life
My mentor's name is Ellia Simmons, during high school, she seemed to put her passion and dreams of becoming an environmental attorney. Throughout her sophomore to senior years of high school, she was a Whitewater River guide on the American River. Being a part of this river guide opened her up to the environment as well as environmental issues. Later on, she got her environmental management degree at Cal Poly, which led her to an environmental planning position. Another difference between other colleges and Cal Poly is that you start major classes immediately, you don't wait until your second year. Something I learned is that general education doesn't come first, you do general education mixed in with all of your classes. A rewarding aspect is that she works in consulting which can constantly engage with work and find different solutions to problems that are difficult to depict.
Week 5
Anticipations for School
During my internship, I felt like I was held more accountable for my work and what I put my time into. Being here makes me unfamiliar with the atmosphere and presence of my school life. Due to this, I do think that there will be a shift in differences between how I used to work and how I work at school now. Something that I am looking forward to coming back from an internship is seeing my friends and getting to know how their workplaces treated them. A few things that I am going to miss are the people that I've bonded with and gotten to know, and the less-stress feeling I get when I am working here.
Reflection on Internship Project
While reviewing my project I saw that something that went well was the mentor meeting interview. I thought that I would run out of questions before the meeting would even be over. Throughout the questions in the interview, I made some questions that'll go into more detail about which quotes I decided to pick. As I looked over my project, something that I would do differently is put less information on my project slides. Something that stands out to me while looking at my presentation is that the skills that I've learned are all computer-based. On the other hand, the skills I used during my experience here are common and used anywhere, like critical thinking or time management.
Photo Essay
This is a photo of a part of the outline I made for four topic ideas I had for my project. The ideas cover fire-resilient landscaping, how ecological planning can be a defense mechanism, rebuilding long-term resilience, and the role of climate-aware design. It describes how using fire-resistant plants away from your house can help avoid the risk of it as fuel for a fire. I also wrote about how to remove flammable materials like trees or shrubs from your house and that hardscape is better for your yard because it’s fire resistant. When I was looking for sources to give me more info on this specific part of brush and fire research since it is such a broad topic.
This is part of my outline for my IPOL presentation. I used all the sites listed and an article by Greg Rubin on defensible space and natural vegetation. It goes into detail about how fire-resilient landscaping and plants require less maintenance. The article by Greg Rubin talks about how fires like Eaton and Palisades got to the communities' housing and burnt all the packed-together homes.
This picture represents when I went on my first site visit to the Aviara Site Visit on the 28th of January to conduct qualitative monitoring. I spread various plant seeds that are more fire resistant and can develop the growth for the plot within the blue-flagged perimeter. In the middle of the blue outer flagged area is a pink flagged stake in the center of the circle. We hiked up the hillside of Aviara after viewing 3 different releve plots. I learned that while doing a field report you need to label the names with plant name codes since many are long to write.
This picture shows a wetland with cattails growing out of it and I was overseeing the construction of the removal of these cattails. What Great Ecology is trying to accomplish here is to design test plots and eradicate cattails with replanting since it blocks the horses' race track end where the winner is decided. By doing this they’ll need different percentages of toxins that kill off the cattails and the different percentages to figure out which would work best.
This photo shows the note cards I made that are filled front to back covering the bullet points on my slides. I use these since it looks better not to include them on the slides and I know I can't memorize this many paragraphs. Making these note cards has given me confidence that I will do well in my presentation.
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