Experiences
Alternative Breaks
In my freshman year at FIU I joined Alternative Breaks (aB), a service learning program that gives students the opportunity to perform volunteer service outside of their community.
I was part of the Animal Rights group within aB, and in March of 2016 we took a trip to Puerto Rico and volunteered at Save a Sato, a dog shelter in San Juan.
Not only did my group mates and I volunteer at Save a Sato for a week, but we also raised money prior to the trip in order to travel and also to donate to the shelter.
We helped the owners of the shelter bathe dogs, clean their kennels, feed them, give them exercise, and even transported dogs to the airport to travel to their new owners.
Career Discovery Internship Program
In the summer of 2017 I participated in an internship program run by the Student Conservation Association and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I was stationed at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in Oak Harbor, Ohio.
During my time here I worked as a Refuge Operations Specialist Intern, which meant that I got to do a little bit of everything at the refuge. I worked with the biology technicians and helped them with habitat management, I worked with visitor services and assisted them with visitor programs, and I worked with the refuge manager to write documents for the refuge.
During my time here I kept a weekly blog , which you can look at here.
Learning Assistant Internship
Since 2017 I have been working as a Learning Assistant (LA) for an Intro to Environmental Science course at FIU. As part of the job, me and my coworkers assist the professor in getting students to understand the course material. After having this job for one semester, I qualified for the LA Internship, which gives me the opportunity to take on more responsibilities as an LA. Some of these new responsibilities include leading class discussions and holding tutoring sessions outside of class time. This is now my fifth semester working as an LA for this course and I have really enjoyed it. I feel that it has greatly helped me better my public speaking and communication skills. This job and internship is what really pushed me to want to pursue a career in environmental education, which is what I hope to do after graduation.
Career Development Internship Bridge Program
In the summer of 2018 I had the privilege of working again for the Student Conservation Association and the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a Biological Intern.
I was stationed at Glacial Ridge and Rydell National Wildlife Refuges in Erskine, Minnesota. I spent three months working with the refuge biologist and assisting with projects that included habitat management, invasive species management, data managements, and some visitor services programs.
I kept a weekly blog detailing my work during my time here. You can find it here.
Global Learning Living Learning Community
In the fall 2018 and spring 2019 semesters I was a member of a living learning community (LLC), specifically the Global Learning LLC at FIU. As a member of this LLC, me and my fellow floor-mates participated in bi-weekly programs that were meant to allow us to explore global ideas and issues. We also all participated in hosting global dinners, us students being separated into groups and each group being assigned a different area of the world. In the group I was in, for example, we were assigned Southern Africa. Based on the area we got, we cooked a meal to share with the rest of the floor and prepared a presentation and activity so that we could share more information on the part of the world we were assigned.