United Way (a.k.a. United Bae)

Hello Friends!

Today is the last day of my 10-week summer internship with The United Way of Central Massachusetts.

So let’s be honest: internships have a mixed reputation, and that’s probably an optimistic adjective. As a progressive, I’m at least slightly morally opposed to unpaid internships. As an undergrad, I’m looking for meaningful experiences in offices and sectors that peak my interest. As someone about to head to D.C. for the semester, I’m depending on an internship to contribute to my academic and professional development while there. As a practical person, I’m worried about how to be sure that an internship in D.C. will be substantial (a.k.a. not a make-2o-copies-of-this-and-then-get-me-a-soy-latte-before-you-write-this-insignificant-memo-and-listen-to-angry-constituent-#375 type of internship) before I commit to one.

I’m especially concerned about that last issue–being sure that I’ll actually do interesting and worthwhile things–because my internship with United Way was really, really wonderful. Let me give you a semi-absurd but completely true indication of how much I enjoyed my time at UW this summer:

There’s this acronym, bae (before anything else). Most people use it to describe their romantic partners, or exaggerate how much they like something. Common HC examples might be:

“Inhouse Coffee is baeeeeeeeeeee”

“Sis,” (friendly, lovely, wonderful Kimball employee) “is the real bae”

“Actual bae: getting more than 5 hours of sleep”

Naturally, I became fond of referring to United Way as, well, “United Bae.” As ridiculous as that might sound, I think it indicates how much I genuinely liked this internship.

My official title was “Day of Caring Program Assistant.” Day of Caring is a service day that United Ways throughout the US coordinate. In Central Massachusetts, DOC engages over 1,200 volunteers in projects designed by nonprofits in the greater Worcester area. It is a beautiful event that fosters meaningful connections between parts of the community that otherwise might not interact. A ton of good work gets done, and the luncheon in the middle of the day is a real celebration of service and collaboration. You can check out pictures from last year’s United Way of Central Mass’ DOC here.

Applying for this internship was a no-brainer: I love event planning, I wanted to get more experience with design, marketing, and communications, I’m really interested in the nonprofit sector, and, spending the summer in Worcester seemed exciting and worthwhile. I applied to this internship through the Summer Internship Program at Holy Cross which is run through the Career Planning office. To them, I am endlessly grateful. The lovely career planning staff helped me figure out how I would manage a trip to Guatemala, Summer Orientation, and a 10-week internship. They helped me with housing, stipends, and, of course, landing the internship itself. To avoid a lengthy tangent, the bottom line is the career planning office is filled with helpful and wonderful women that I am extremely thankful for.

Anyway, as amped as I was for this internship, I had no idea how truly great it would be. I worked under a kind, fabulous supervisor, Kerri Sandberg, who gave me enough guidance to be successful and enough freedom to explore what I really enjoyed and wanted to get out of the internship. I worked in what I am convinced is one of the friendliest offices in the world, filled with hard-working, fun, helpful people who are doing really important work for the Worcester community. I practiced all those skills I wanted to in marketing, communications, and administrative nonprofit work and found talents and interests that I had never really considered before. It never felt like day-in-day-out-real-world-adult-life. It felt like every day, I was coming in to do something interesting that would contribute to an organization and event that I really care about. Outside of the office, I fell in love with Worcester at Bravehearts games, non-Shrewsbury Street restaurants, and poorly jogging around the city whenever I found adequate motivation.

I think, sometimes at Holy Cross, we are apologetic, perhaps even overtly negative about our location in Worcester. We need to stop that. This community is filled with people who care deeply, who think carefully, and who work hard. I am filled with gratitude that this is a place I can call home.

Today, I will say goodbye to United Way. Tomorrow, I will say goodbye to Worcester. Both of those will be incredibly hard because of how wonderful this summer was.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

DFTBA

The picture below was taken by the CEO of the United Way, Tim Garvin. He gave me a lovely goodbye gift and warm wishes on my way out.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2015 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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