End of Scholars Reflection Questions

What did you do for your practicum? Please include a detailed description.

For my practicum, I decided to do an internship with the Youth Activism Project, a nonprofit organization that I am familiar with due to collaboration on prior activism work. Within the organization, I worked within a specific group called the Activation Hub alongside a small group of 5-6 team leads. As Activation Hub team leads, we had the opportunity to manage and mentor an accumulated network of 300+ young activists who had signed up with YAP to gain experience in policy advocacy, campaign building, and general activism mentorship. As a team lead, I participated in weekly shifts in where I hold scheduled one-on-one coaching/mentorship calls with individual members of our network and give them specialized assistance on their projects. During these shifts, I also did outreach work with student activists and organizations and clerical work in updating activists’ information, replying to emails, making organizational social media posts, and amplifying student-led events to our entire network. I also participate in weekly meetings with the rest of the team leads in which we regularly discussed organizational management, operations, and generally how we could make our program more useful, seamless, and enjoyable for those who signed up with us.

How did you find/identify your practicum, and what advice you would give to future Media Scholars on identifying a practicum site (such as how to contact a supervisor)?

Finding my practicum wasn’t difficult for several reasons. Firstly, I already knew that I wanted to gain more experience in policy advocacy and also be able to do mentorship work using my experience in advocacy. I wasn’t sure if any positions that would constitute a practicum were available within YAP, so I reached out directly to the executive director of the organization to inquire about it since I’d built a good professional relationship with her over the years. Having said this, I would advise future media scholars to first consider anyone already within their network to ask around about opportunities that might be of interest prior to doing research for an opportunity and starting from scratch. They might be able to connect you with someone else or even offer you a position themselves. Practicing communication will likely be a large part of your media practice, so it’s important to get in the habit of contacting people (respectfully and with etiquette) via email because you never know what opportunity might come about.

What did you learn from your practicum?

There is truly no shortage of what I’ve learned in my practicum, simply because I was introduced to new concepts in not only policy advocacy but organizational functioning on a week-to-week basis. The first major thing I learned is the importance of communication and transparency in group dynamics. This is obviously referring to the more organizational aspects of my practicum which dealt with talking to the team leads every week and not only troubleshooting what was going right and wrong within our organizational operations, but also where I felt I lacked as a team leader and the assistance I could seek from my activation hub counterparts who were considered my equals. I felt as though working within this specific facet of the organization propelled my communication skills further than they might have elsewhere, simply because titles and individual responsibilities weren’t extremely important— we all sought out help and asked each other questions alike. This made it so anyone who might’ve faltered in their responsibilities for the week or wasn’t clear on something we discussed in our meetings was always able to comfortably ask questions and gain clarification without judgment. Aside from this I obviously learned a lot about the importance of youth voice is reflected adequately and accurately in government. Having done several individual interviews as well as collective coaching calls with our network, I’ve heard many personal testimonies of young people attempting to do outreach work with elected officials or their respective administration and being met with a lack of seriousness or often no response at all. Young people's voices are ill-represented in civic issues because they are not taken seriously enough, even on matters that may directly affect them, and this is something that needs to change. The opportunity to work so closely with young people with firsthand experience of the tribulations of civic engagement not only taught me the importance of youth activism but also how integral organizations that uplift and host campaigns for youth activists are. It has definitely shown me that this is work I would like to dedicate much of my life and career to in the future.

How can you apply your practicum experience to your life/career moving forward? Post-graduation and your prospective career/ field of interest?

There are several ways I can apply my practicum experience in life and moving forward because there are many different routes I could go within this specific sect of work, which is part of the reason why I jumped at the chance to participate in this experience. While I haven’t flushed out specifically what I want in a long-term career I do know that I want to go in the route of policy advocacy and fostering the skills of civic engagement in young minds through organizational work. having already experienced many facets of this type of work simply in my experience of being a young activist this opportunity has only afforded me more professional development skills in terms of organizational leadership, team building and problem-solving, all things that will be integral if I want to One day hold the position of executive Director of my own nonprofit or go into the to social entrepreneurship field where I can assist other organizations in doing this type of work. I would obviously need further leadership experience to be able to achieve this, but I could not think of a better experience at this time in my college career to begin preparing me for it.

What are your plans for the rest of your time at UMD?

I am currently a public policy major honing in on nonprofit leadership and management. I also recently picked up a minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship in hopes that it will expand my skill set beyond policy advocacy/analysis and prepare me for my prospective future goals in running an organization and managing a large team. Media Scholars has given me the opportunity to meet a diverse set of students with varying career paths that I plan on continuing to network with in my last four semesters at UMD. I plan on joining student groups that hone in more on what I’ve learned in my time in scholars, specifically student-led campus publications and writing clubs.

Above is the first Journal Entry I did reflecting on my initial experiences starting in the Activation Hub at the Youth Activism Project, an activity that is encouraged at the organization. I chose to display this work because I think it well reflects my growth in knowledge and understanding of the work that was expected of me in this practicum and how this specific team operates since the beginning of my internship. At the time I did this journal, I was still not fully adapted to my role and was apprehensive about the learning curve that was required since I did run into some issues. My hope is that I can properly convey my growth as a leader during this experience in the above reflection, because I truly did feel that I surpassed the roadblocks and fully became a productive and functioning member of the Activation Hub Team due to my own acquired skill and the amazing mentorship of my colleagues. I'm looking forward to continuing my work with the Youth Activism Project!