Growing up, summers always seemed to be the time for sleeping in and relaxing. However, summers during college become a time for internships and jobs that can benefit students’ futures.
This summer, several Harding students had internships and jobs that took them all over the country and gave them new experiences.
Katie Lake, a senior accounting major, spent her summer as a logistics finance intern for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Based out of Bentonville, Ark., Lake and 270 other interns worked on individual projects throughout the course of the internship.
Lake’s personal project was focused on finding the distribution centers’ correct service charges for stores; a task she says helped her develop skills in her major.
When the interns were not working on personal projects, they had finance Q&A sessions and listened to executive speakers from the company. Lake said her favorite part of the experience was seeing how Fortune 500’s top company worked.
“Seeing how that operates and knowing that everything you do is on a huge scale, even though you feel really small, everything you do affects someone else within this huge organization,” Lake said.
Senior psychology major Fabian Ruiz has worked for the National Parks Service of Little Rock, Ark., for the past four years. This summer, he worked as a tour guide in Little Rock Central High School discussing the ‘Little Rock Nine,’ the group of African-American students who first integrated the high school in the 1950s.
Ruiz gave four to five tours a week. He said the most challenging parts of the job were dealing with the sensitive nature of the subject and translating everything into English, his third language.
Even though the job was more focused on history, Ruiz said he learned a lot about his major in the process. He had to deal with all kinds of reactions and points of views on the subject matter.
“The most amazing thing is that you don’t know who’s going to come in so you get to deal with all kinds of people,” Ruiz said.
Senior Emily Lincoln, a communication sciences and disorders major, spent her summer in Portage, Alaska, at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.
She found the job as a gift shop clerk and snack bar cook on www.CoolJobs.com. Employees for the conservation center were required to work 40 hours a week. When they were not working, employees and interns went on group excursions such as day cruises to whale watch or to feed baby animals.
Lincoln said the most valuable skill she learned was adapting to the customs of the tourists who would come into the gift shop.
“I’ll probably end up back in Alaska,” Lincoln said.
