One of the first outings I’ve had was a trip to the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge for a field visit. I was amazed at how beautiful the refuge is. I did not realize how close the refuge was to my hometown of San Jose. Inside the refuge, they had interactive panels to help engage visitors to learn about information pertaining to the history, species and flora of the refuge. I was able to meet other interns as well and have discussions with them about their roles and what they are working on.

I’ve been curious about other positions within the Fish & Wildlife Service so I had the opportunity to shadow Visitor Services Digital Marketing. I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to form the media presented on social media sites and what the process would be like for our agency. Sitting through meetings with the Digital Marketing team made me realize that a lot of planning is involved to make sure social media posts are precise while also engaging for current and new audiences. I was tasked to try to come up with as many ideas as I could for posts. While I have always been amazed with people who work in these roles, I definitely have more of an appreciation for them as it requires an immense amount of creativity and collaboration to properly convey your ideas into posts that are informative yet appealing. 

Another shadowing experience I had within the Fish & Wildlife Service is with the Office of Communications. I was able to join their team for a week and sit in on their meetings. I had the opportunity to sit down with everyone on the team and get to know them individually to ask about their background and discuss my career goals. At the end of the week, I was interviewed for the Co-Worker Connection feature in the Regional Insider. It was my first time doing an interview for an article but it was a very fun experience. The whole experience was very intriguing as I was able to see first-hand how hardworking the Office of Communications team is. The Fish & Wildlife Service relies heavily on them and they are a very important team to the service.

I’ve been very grateful for these opportunities I’ve had during my internship. While I still have some time left before my internship ends, I hope that I can still gain some more experience shadowing other sectors in the Fish & Wildlife Service. I’m looking forward to still finishing up my Region 8 Trails Inventory Clean-Up project and any future work I will be given as well.