Finished!

Well my hours are done and dusted and I couldn't be happier.

240 is a trying amount of hours to get done in one semester and if I had my time over, I think I would do my internship to go over two semesters or something along those lines. It's been quite difficult to manage this, writing a massive research paper and working at my 2 paid jobs... all since early July. Then again, one semester, less hours would be nice too!

I have really enjoyed this internship, and while my hours are up I am actually staying on the project (not as intensely because I can't actually afford to anymore!) to assist with the rest of the museum plan. I figure it is something that my name is attached to and I do want to do a good job.

My supervisor has also mentioned future paid work at the start of next year, however it wouldn't be full-time and permanent. I said I would think about it, but perhaps I could do it as a side job as well? Right now I want to get into the workforce and use my degrees that I've spent 6 years getting, so a temporary-non-full-time position isn't really ideal, but we'll see.

I've learnt a lot about community consultation, writing reports, working with independent contractors, STATISTICS, collating data, focus groups, surveys etc. My supervisor said that this was a similar process to doing a PhD and that I would be well prepared to take it on afterwards. Hmm... maybe in a few years? I think for now my academic side needs a holiday!

Well I'm still preoccupied with these survey tables and graphs, but the good news is I'm almost there!

This has probably been the most challenging task of my internship, mainly because my brain simply struggles with seemingly simply mathematics! It is interesting seeing all the data clearly, it's just getting there that is slightly frustrating, especially when my version of Word appears to be sick of it too! (It has crashed a few times on me so far...)

I realise this post is probably similar to the last one as I'm still working on the same thing I was last week, so it will be kept nice and brief... on a positive note, I have about 10 more official hours to go until I will have clocked the required 240 hurrah!

My question to anyone who comes across this post, are there any more official admin things we have to do to have our internship 'signed off' by COFA, once we have completed our official hours? I would hate to miss a particular deadline after doing 240 hours of voluntary work in one semester!

Home stretch

I met with my supervisor again last week and she estimated that we're over 2/3 of the way through the museum plan... YAY! I'm about to get stuck in to collating the survey data, which is actually quite mathematical so I'm not too sure how my creatively inclined brain will manage this task! It's a whole lot of statistical analysis, which is interesting because it shows the raw data of what people in the region have been saying about a new museum there. It will take a fair bit of time to create all the tables though, as she recruited a biometrician to obtain the stats from the perspective of gender, age and whether or not they live on a farm. So that equates to roughly 60 tables.... yikes. The good news is that I'm getting my hours down, which right now is up there on my list of priorities... while I aim to finish my 240 required hours in the next three - four weeks, I will most likely stay on the project until December when they present the plan for discussion and comment to the Council. My supervisor has also said that I could potentially present some of my findings to the Council/local community, which would be a really great (unpaid) experience. We're almost there!