The Motorsports Industry

I learned a tremendous amount from my internship at Speedway Motorsports this summer. I’m not sure how the summer raced by so quickly.

The most challenging part of my internship was living in a place that I was unfamiliar with. Charlotte is a gorgeous city with many attractions and many highway systems. I often missed turns and got lost when driving around the city at first. After a few weeks, I no longer needed my GPS to navigate.
The most rewarding part of my internship was meeting professionals that I aspire to be like and work with one day in the industry that I love. The primary reason that I moved to Charlotte for the summer was to surround myself with people that work in the motorsports industry. Charlotte is the hub for NASCAR racing in the United States with NASCAR headquarters, most of the racing teams, and sports marketing agencies located in and around the greater Charlotte area. I was able to receive invaluable professional development advice catered to the motorsports industry from supervisors and professionals that I met throughout the summer.

I am very thankful for the opportunity to have seen the behind-the-scenes view and gain insights on how Speedway Motorsports continues to be a leading innovator in NASCAR. It wouldn’t have been possible without the Royal Experience Summer Internship Program. It will truly be a summer that I will never forget.

The front stretch at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Mark Miller
Marketing/Business Administration

Rewards and Challenges of My Internship at the U.S. Marshals Service

The most rewarding part of this internship is that it has helped me reevaluate my values and mindset about several things. I have always been relatively naive about society and had a hard time accepting the reality of how horrible people can be. I always chose to see the best in people and overlook their negative characteristics. No, being positive is not a bad quality, although it can land me in a situation that could end my life if I trust the wrong person. I realized that I need to find a good balance of positivity, awareness, along with being sufficiently informed. People always joke and say that I am going to be the cop that lets the criminal sit in the front seat with me and refuses to use handcuffs because I don’t want to hurt them. Although that is an exaggerated example it does portray the type of personality I have.

The most challenging aspect of this internship would have to be that while in certain units there is not much work that you as an intern can handle primarily due to the nature of the work. I think that if I was shy and had a hard time talking to people I would not have had the experience I did. You spend much of your time talking to deputies and if you lack social skills, that can be challenging.

Allison Santoro
Psychology

Rewards in Disguise

As my internship comes to a close, I have experienced a multitude of emotions. When I tell people that I work in a morgue, I receive many cringes and disgusted faces, which, unfortunately, I expected. There are many hardships that come with this job. I see dead bodies every day. If that isn’t enough, I observe autopsies, I discharge bodies to the funeral home, and I witness the lives of the decedent’s family crumble before my eyes. It’s challenging to get called on a case and have no idea what to expect when I open the front door to the decedent’s house. There is honestly no aspect of this job that has not been challenging. However, it is also extremely rewarding, which most people probably would not think. One of the forensic pathologists I have talked to put it perfectly: We are the people that are trusted by families to treat their deceased love one with respect, dignity, and honor. We are expected not to abuse a corpse and treat them with the upmost respect, no matter their past. We are the ones that determine the cause of death and inform the family; we can help give them closure.  It is more rewarding than most people would think. Not everyone could look at deceased bodies all day and treat them with dignity, but I am proud to say that the employees here are some of the people that can.

Brittany Ruch
Forensic Chemistry

Most rewarding, most challenging

After interning at the American Lung Association for a few months, the most rewarding part of my job was hearing stories from the Lung Heroes. Lung Heroes are the people who inspire, encourage, and are the reasons why we raise money for lung diseases and raise awareness for the importance of lung health. As a Special Events Intern, I worked directly with people in the community and heard countless stories of people affected by lung disease and how the work of the Lung Association is necessary. There is a very rewarding feeling about doing work for a non-profit that has such a profound impact in the lives of others in the community I live in through the programs, training classes, and events. The most challenging part of my internship was trying to explain and convey the importance of lung health to others. Most people don’t know, but lung cancer is the #1 killer of men and women in the United States, and is nearly preventable. The struggle between addiction and fundraising for lung disease is a hard conversation to have with some people, because it has such an impact on so many lives. Overall, I loved the experience I had at the American Lung Association and loved the culture of the organization! I learned a lot of transferable skills at my internship that I am excited to continue to use in my future career.

Caitlin Tulaney
Human Resources

A Summer with MassDOT

This internship has had many rewarding parts to it. I have met some remarkable people, and I have learned a countless number of things about the government, policy and how computing is essential in these fields. Some of the people I have met are the Secretary of Transportation, Stephanie Pallock and the Governor Charlie Baker.  Governor Baker remembered who I was when he saw me after the talk he gave to all the interns, and I was in disbelief that he even remembered who I was. All of these things have been very rewarding, but I believe the most rewarding part is seeing the progress of the work I have done with my boss on website audits, setting up a network shared drive for the Secretary’s office and working on Bills that need to be passed in the state. Working on such projects has truly allowed me to fully become immersed in my experience at the Department of Transportation. I have learned a lot about how working for the government really is, how long things take, and how someone with my technical skills can fit into this field. This has truly been a one-of-a-kind experience. The most challenging part I encountered was leaving my comfort zone and truly expanding my horizons to work. While I was able to work on computer related activities, I also worked with many different individuals from all departments within MassDOT on countless projects. I worked on collecting data on printers in the entire Commonwealth, I’ve worked on Autonomous vehicle legislation, and I’ve worked with taxi companies, uber, and lyft to try and regulate how we treat each entity. The challenge with all these different projects was keeping them all in check about what I was working on each time, which really helped me build my time management skills. Working with people to agree on what we should do also helped me learn how to compromise with coworkers. This internship was nothing but beneficial for me, and I truly am grateful for this opportunity.

Alexander Pinarreta
Computer Engineering

End of Summer Reflection

As my summer research internship comes to an end, I have been able to reflect on how challenging and rewarding the past ten weeks have been. Having the opportunity to work in a lab for the summer on my own research project has been very rewarding, because it has given me a feel for what a career in research might look like. While I have spent a lot of my time trying things and failing, I have been able to generate a lot of new ideas and learn a lot from scientific literature.

The most challenging part of my summer has been creating and keeping a schedule for myself for my research project. While I have the responsibility of communicating all my lab results to the Principal Investigators I am working with, the progression of my project is entirely up to me. I have made less progress than I hoped to this summer because some of the steps of my project have taken more time than I planned for, and this has been challenging for me.

While there have been both rewarding and challenging parts of my summer, overall my experience as a summer undergraduate research intern has been a positive one. Being able to spend a whole summer doing research has confirmed my  interest in a career in the field of research, and I find that pretty satisfying.

Sarah Ricupero
Neuroscience/Biomathematics

A Summer in the Public Defender’s Office

The Public Defender’s Office deals with a variety of criminal law cases that take place within Lackawanna County. Although I have already spent time in the office working with social services, I have really enjoyed my new assignment with the attorneys in the office. I hope that my time with the attorneys will allow me to better understand the role they play within the criminal justice system and get a more detailed look at what happens throughout their days. I have quickly learned that there is never a typical day within the office. With that being said, I am confident that following this internship I will leave with a vast amount of knowledge regarding hearings, petitions, files, and different stages of the criminal court process. In addition to the procedural side, I anticipate that I will be able to interact with clients and learn more about their lives. I have already spent some time with attorneys while they are interviewing clients and reading through Pre-Sentence Investigation reports that review their life history in great detail.  I chose to pursue a second internship in the office so that I would be more informed when making a career decision. I have been considering pursuing a law degree since developing an interest in the criminal justice system and am hoping that a more in depth look will be able to steer me in the right direction.

Delia Gavin
Counseling & Human Services

Research and Increasing SEO

From this internship I would like to learn how to properly improve the SEO (search engine optimization) for the website I am creating. This website is a city guide for local restaurants, bars, and events in the Washington, DC area. I research the area and the most popular neighborhoods in order to provide the best content for future viewers. I have already learned the importance of increasing the SEO value in order to have the website be successful organically. I would like to learn the ins and outs of running a website and how to get a website to appear on the first page of any search engine, specifically Google. There seem to be many steps to achieving this goal, especially when starting from complete scratch. I hope that once this internship is completed, I will leave with the knowledge of how to efficiently rank a website on Google, the behind the scenes actions of running a website, and how to accurately track and analyze the data. Once this is achieved, I will have the knowledge to apply to other jobs or opportunities in my future in marketing.

Elizabeth Chostowski
Marketing

Learning in the Field

Thanks to the Royal Experience Program, I have spent the last few weeks learning and growing as an intern at Lackawanna Pro Bono. The inner workings of the justice system, especially as it relates to its application to those of disadvantaged backgrounds, has been the centerpiece of experience and exposure thus far. While facts and figures can be committed to memory around these topics, such book knowledge never can be compared to getting up close and personal with the daily realities faced by these members of our community.

This summer experience will enable me to test my coursework-based assumptions, as well as develop my critical thinking and communication skills. I also hope to continue acquiring the ability to elicit accurate and complete information from clients and gain practical knowledge about the legal system. I am confident that the Lackawanna Pro Bono experience will inform my future practice of law, allowing me to cater my client approach to their individual circumstances with compassion.

Paula Awuku
Political Science

First Month of My Internship

It feels like time has flown by so fast during my first month here in Singapore, but during this small period of time I was able to learn so much about the culture here, in addition to learning more about computer programming. In my internship, I have been learning how the language Python is used in web development, as well as gaining experience in dealing with clients directly, which I have never done before; I believe it is a perfect fit for me, as it corresponds heavily to my major and gives me a great opportunity to explore southeast Asia while learning more in the field of computer science. This experience will heavily impact my career path as well, as having the international experience has become increasingly important to employers, and it will also benefit me in my goal to go to one of the top graduate schools in the country to obtain my MBA. For the next two months, I hope to learn more about interacting with other companies as well as further develop my programming skills, while also learning more about the culture.

Nicholas Constantinou
Computer Engineering