Closing Report

Galileo Internship Closing Report

Camp Galileo, an amazing environment for campers to flourish in athletics, science, and art, has helped me, a staff member, to build and extend my communication, people and collaboration skills. This was all in result of an essential element to camper success which is obviously the staff’s cohesiveness and effectiveness in tackling problems and composing new sharper solutions.

Not every second of camp was about devising new solutions though because there are a lot of existing systems that are already the best they can be and are already implemented in the tasks we are given. Most summer interns are given a task each week and the my first one was the lunch maker. Being a lunch maker mainly meant labeling cardboard trays and putting in the matching lunch. Similar to lunch maker, my second task, being an office aid, also included a lot of labeling and sorting. Additionally it also had me checking in late campers and escorting them to their assigned leader. The third and final job was known as a “breaker”; this job, as the name implies, meant that I would go around giving people breaks. It was extremely interactive as I took the leader’s position while they were on break and joined in on activities the campers were currently doing. Working at Galileo, however, wasn’t extremely structured as we were just called up when we were needed and weren’t on the main tasks we were given. For example, sometimes after I had finished making lunches, I would make posters and tape them up, help instructors prepare materials needed for the next day, or even take out trash/recycling.

Diverging back to specific skills, there was a lot of problem solving and efficient brainstorming going on when I was working as a lunch master. It might sound simple because it’s just labeling and putting lunches in right? There are actually, in fact, a lot of small variables that go into it. For example, we get the lunches delivered at around 9 and have to prepare lunches for about 100 kids before 12. Basically, it is hard to sort all the individual lunches and snacks so a partner and I devised a new system in which we label the type on top of the box versus the side and layout all the hot lunches, snacks, and fruits. This made our system a lot faster and we managed to finish in under and hour compared to our previous 2 hours.

Before I had encounter this internship I always thought all my time would be used doing boring things and there was never any fun in a paying job. Galileo has taught me how to have fun with its enthusiastic ways of finishing tasks and has shown me how rewarding it can be when what you have done has made a difference or benefited someone else. I felt like I was involved and interactive with everyone including campers. Overall improving my communication and collaboration skills with my staff team, I have learned how to have fun at work and how to provide a great experience to campers in doing so. It has also taught me a lot about office procedures and arranging files and items for campers. This experience has really reinforced the idea of finding a job that makes me happy.