LINK INTERNSHIP
The Animas High School LINK program (leading internships for new knowledge) takes all of the junior class and has them seek out an internship in a field of study they’re interested in, to work there for three weeks. These internship can include anything from working on making music videos for producers, to standing in on surgeries in hospitals. These internships can help students decide if the field of study they’re interested in is something they want to pursue. The business I chose to do my internship with was Durango Auto Works, a local car shop. They work on all types of cars and do an array of services to them, from simple maintenance to more complex jobs such as timing belts.
http://durangoautoworks.com
http://durangoautoworks.com
Finding my LINK
Finding my internship was a challenge to me. Initially I planned to go to Australia and do my internship with my family at their company Bretts Wharf, but that ended up falling through. I then had an internship planned to go to Venavatu, this also fell through. In the end I had around five days to find an internship so I chose to do it with an old family friend at Durango Autoworks. Finding a replacement to my internship after the first two fell through was very stressful to say the least and was the biggest challenge I encountered when finding my LINK. I initially thought that I was lucky because I was able to find an internship very quickly and had months of free time to prepare. Both these opportunities seemed like sure things, so I did not consider thinking of backups in case they did not work out. I contacted four people regarding internships, the first two people I contacted were members of my family but ended up falling through. I then contacted a couple of local mechanics and found my mentor. I didn’t necessarily get told no from any potential mentors, I had my first two fall through and didn’t get a response from anywhere I contacted. I chose this opportunity because I personally know the owner and know him to be a generous helpful person. As well as this I knew that this shop worked on all types of cars, and I thought I could learn a lot and I could get better at working on my car.
Coming Into my LINK
I hope to learn about how cars work, diagnosing problems on a car, and how businesses run in general. Coming away from this internship I hope that I am more confident in working on my car, as well as this I hope I have a better understanding of how cars work in general. I hope that I am able to generally help out my coworkers and boss as opposed to getting in the way. Even if it’s just small things like oil changes I hope I am able to have a hands on internship.
Coming Out of my LINK
I think that the most important skills to bring in are a willingness to learn and to be humble and understand that your mentor knows more than you. Your mentor’s goal is to teach you and prepare you for the field your interested in, even if you know a lot about the field, it’s your mentors profession. One example of this is when I was starting my LINK. Within my first couple of days I used the wrong ratchet when screwing the bolt into a customer's differential and accidentally snapped the head of the bolt off. If I had just asked more questions the mistake could have been avoided. I think that besides knowing much more about cars and working on them, I was able to gain more confidence. I was nervous when I first started this internship, being thrown into a new environment without any familiar faces or experience was scary for me and threw me off at first. I was scared to ask questions or get in anyone’s way. After my first week of so however I realized that if I was going to succeed that I needed to up my confidence and get help from my coworkers. I think that my biggest shortcoming during LINK was no being confident in my own work and not wanting to mess something up. Working on customers cars was scary, there was very little room for error, and you can’t really make mistakes when it’s someone else’s car. This made it so often times if there was something I was uncertain of I would pass it off to my mentor or another co worker. Eventually I saw that this method of doing things was inefficient and that if I wanted to learn and grow I would need to set my fear aside. My internship left me in a place of confusion about what I want to pursue after high school. I have always wanted to go to college and pursue a career that I'm not particularly interested in just for the money that come with it. But after doing LINK and finding my deep interest in this field, I want to pursue a business major in college and start my own car shop.