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What I found most interesting about “Moving Beyond the Academic Community” by Chris Anson and L. Forsberg was how we all seem to have the same feelings about being left to do our own thing, with absolutely no guidelines, when we’re assigned a task. In school, our teachers tell us how to do mostly everything. They give us guidelines, and then they grade us based on how well we follow them. In some of the internships we read about, however, that wasn’t the case. Some of these interns were given tasks with no guidelines, left to do whatever they wanted to do, it seemed.
I can relate to that. My boss is on maternity leave, so I’ve pretty much had to do my own thing all semester. I have a list of stuff I need to do, of course, but I have no guidelines as to how to do it. I just do whatever I think is right, and it all seems to be pretty good, according to my supervisor and colleagues. I am not frustrated by it because I know there’s a good reason my boss and I haven’t been in much contact. She has a lot on her hands at the moment. If she were there all the time and never gave me any guidance whatsoever, sure, I’d be just as frustrated as the interns we read about.
I know that some of us have different situations with our bosses. Some of you only get into contact with your boss through email, right? Does that leave you frustrated sometimes? Or has it been pretty good? Are you far enough along in the internship that you already have a firm grasp on what you’re doing and you no longer need any guidance?
Another thing I found interesting about this reading was the interns’ use of their journals, which is oddly similar to our modern-day blog posts. The entries are all reflective, which is what ours should be like. (Ours are more reflective, though.) My only thought about the journal entries other than how they’re similar to our blogs was this: how primitive! I knew this reading was old as soon as I read about the journals. Then I checked the date—1990. Wow.
I saw some similarities between my internship and the cases in the reading. Mostly with how they were given projects at their work. I have a fair amount of freedom with the projects for this internship, but there are times where I wish I had more information to work with. I guess an example would be deadlines for my projects – my supervisors don’t necessarily always give me deadlines for when they want things to be done, and I end up asking for dates so that I have some kind of mental calendar for managing my time. There have always been set deadlines and due dates for assignments in my classes, and I’m finding the transition toward creating my own deadlines to be a little rough.
Everyone at my job is really helpful when I need them though, and I feel really fortunate for that. It’s true that they’re sometimes not available, and there are times when I have to email people and wait for a response before I can move on with something, but communication has been pretty effective at my job.
I also tend to ask a lot of questions at work (mostly when I first started) because I want to be sure of what I’m writing. I don’t think I would get as much out of this internship if people at work were less responsive when it came to answering questions. Have you guys had any experiences where someone just seemed put off by questions or anything?
“Moving Beyond the Academic Community” by Chris Anson and L. Forsberg is probably the text that I can relate to the most out of all of the ones assigned so far. I especially connected with the “Disorientation” section on page 211, specifically the journal entry by Jim where he claims that he felt unprepared when he stepped into his internship. I agreed with him totally and it made me realize how different the academic environment was compared to my own internship. In school, even though the assignments were challenging, there was always that feeling that you were being pushed towards success. Assignments were given with strict guidelines, examples, and additional help was always offered to help drag you across the finish line if need be.
At my internship, all of that changed. I was given a lot of assignments right off of the bat and my supervisors, constantly busy and all the way in another state, couldn’t always get in contact with my to clarify the assignment. As is referenced in Rachel’s post, the responsibility comes early and often. The thing to keep in mind to that school HAS prepared you in some way for the tasks you are to undertake, you just have to keep your head on straight and apply the things that you learned in class to your work. In every job I have ever had, from working at a liquor store to laying pipe on a construction site, I have felt overwhelmed on the day there. One thing to remember is that you will acclimate and things will improve if you keep working hard at it.
“Moving Beyond the Academic Community” by Chris Anson and L. Forsberg was the most intriguing article that we’ve had to read so far in the class, mainly because it pretty much nails everything I’ve experienced during my internship. It’s hard to change your style of writing after you’ve been trained to write a certain way for years. I’ve run into a few speed bumps with my writing during my internship. I have to agree with cdvick (sorry I don’t remember your name) in regards to the leniency aspect of her job. I also wish I was given more information on an assignment like we are given in classes, but then I remember that these people have other stuff they’re doing. It’s not their job to sit there and hold my hand and walk me through every single assignment they give me. I have to step out of my comfort zone and do these tasks the best I can.
But everyone at my job is really helpful. I’ve had a few articles that I’ve written that were difficult to do. When I got my first draft back that I did for my internship, I saw an abundance of red marks on it and I had a mini panic attack because I thought I was about to get chewed out from my supervisor. It turns out that my draft wasn’t as bad as I thought. She informed me that she tends to be ‘edit-happy’ and make a lot of marks, but informed me that I had a good foundation. She gave me great feedback and I can now produce an article with far less red marks than before.
Each class I’ve taken at WVU has definitely helped me with my internship so far. There’s a wide range of things I’ve had to do at my internship but it seems like there a bits and pieces from every PWE course that has showed up at my internship. I never thought I was edit as much as I have had to so far and I never thought I would use APA stlye, but I’m glad I did.
This is probably one of my favorite readings thus far. In ““Moving Beyond the Academic Community,” we leaner about the various transitions that a student/intern goes through. Also, there article mentions how the student goes from academic to professional writing in a large company. . I believe that I am still in a largely academic setting, but my writing and style still had to adjust. I considered the rhetoric of the situation. Many things that I have learned in PWE classes has been very helpful. I find myself even looking back into old PWE class books for help on projects for my internship
The most interesting part of the article for me was the section about going through the 3 main transitions. The transitions were very accurate. At the beginning you are simply anticipating the role. I remember the anticipation before my first day. The internship ended up not being anything like I expected. Next, the stage where you become frustrated; I hit this stage a couple of weeks ago, and I was worried that I would become to overwhelmed and that I would have to give up. Finally, the stage where everything is resolved, and you learned from experience. While these stages can apply to anything, I believe that they really are great descriptions of stages in the internship. The people in the group also remind me of our class because it said that they come from all walks of life in their internships. I like that we are all very diverse with our internships, and that we haven’t had hard experiences like mentioned in the previous articles.
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