The Royal Experience Summer Internship Program

Margaret Dodgson, molecular biology research assistant, checking in from the University of Scranton. As a novice researcher, I am still developing lab techniques, abilities in experimental designing, and a knowledge base for my subject material. During my research internship, I hope not only to learn more about research skills, but also learn more about myself. I am excited to be able to explore topics that interest me. This internship is more than identifying the sex and parasite load from the blood samples of birds. This internship is an amazing opportunity to develop skills that I can transfer to other research labs in my future career. The techniques I have learned, and will continue to learn, can be applied to any laboratory setting. I have also learned how to work collaboratively with others, manage time, trouble shoot, problem solve, and think creatively.

I hope to pursue a career in the medical field. I believe that research is an integral part of practicing medicine.  Research can help combat chronic and new illnesses. I particularly believe that the field of molecular biology and genetics will be a central part of the future of healthcare. Many diseases may be able to be treated with gene therapy. My research may involve birds, but the techniques in decoding the birds’ genetic makeup can be applied to a humans as well. Scientific research is tedious and challenging, but it is worth it.

My internship has only just begun and I am excited to be a part of such an amazing organization. In just a few short weeks I have learned so much about grief that I did not know before. This experience will help me begin to evaluate my career goals, as I start to see what I like or dislike about working in a grief support setting. As a facilitator for grief support groups I will provide an opportunity for families to communicate, and I will be a listener for anyone that needs someone to talk to. A death in the family can completely change someone’s life, and although there is nothing I can do to make their loved one return I hope I can make it an easier adjustment by being there for support. I hope I will learn how to appropriately approach conversations about death, because it is often a sensitive topic for many people. This summer is the first time I will take on a clinical role, and it is just the beginning of my career exploration. As a psychologist, I will communicate with people every day who are struggling to cope in their daily lives. Helping people cope with grief is just one area within the field of mental health, and it is something I could envision myself doing in the future. There are many opportunities ahead and so far I think I am on a good track to discovering the right fit for me!

Marissa DeStefano
Psychology

I hope to gain so much knowledge and experience from this internship. During my freshman year, as an uncertain biology student, I decided to take a first-year seminar that really intrigued me: Immigration Experience in the United States. We read a book, titled Enrique’s Journey, and it struck me hard. I read about his various deportations, his horrible struggles as a child simply trying to find his mother in the United States. How could we treat people, especially unaccompanied minors, in such a way? This class changed the course of my life; from it, I decided that I needed to help fix this problem and help immigrants who are in the process of removal proceedings to win their fight. When I found my internship, I was thrilled; I would get to use the Spanish I had learned over the past 15 years and get to learn more of the legal aspect and ramifications of immigration. During my internship, I hope to learn more about the Violence Against Women Act (for victims of domestic violence), U Visas (for victims of crime), and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (for unaccompanied minors) as well as the evidence needed to win these types of cases. I believe that this internship will be even more life-changing than my first-year seminar as it will be a small taste of what it will be like to be a lawyer and will give me the skills needed to become an excellent immigration lawyer and advocate for immigrants.

Kylie Mignat
International Studies

I can’t believe I’m starting my 4th week at my internship. I feel as though I’ve already learned so much about occupational therapy. I’m getting to see first-hand how what we learned in the classroom relates in real life situations. During the remaining 8 weeks I hope to learn how to better create interventions that relate to the client as an individual. I noticed that a lot of the time therapists get overwhelmed with a “rush” of clients at one time and the individualism of treatment seems to be lost. I have my own caseload and have been trying to consciously create treatments to benefit them as well as incorporate something that they enjoy doing. For example, one of my patients came in extremely weak from a recent fall and surgery. This patient in particular enjoyed sketching and painting so I decided to incorporate sketching while working on his endurance and standing balance during the session. I’ve found that the more I am able to relate to a client the more cooperative they become in a session. I think this will be an important aspect of my future career because I feel that the best health care professionals are the ones that go out of their way to make you feel like you’re the most important patient they have at that moment. As the summer progresses I hope that I can keep coming up with creative interventions as ways to help my clients and grow as a therapist.

Katie Leithauser
Occupational Therapy

So far my internship with WHHI- TV has been extremely rewarding. I have had incredible experiences and meet wonderful/ helpful people. One thing that I’ve realized while interning here is that I have the opportunity to truly learn from professionals in my field. The main goal I want to take out this internship is to learn as much as I possibly can. So far I have been asking so many questions about everything in the industry from editing, best way to perform on air, and just the everyday workings of a TV station. I feel that this internship will impact my career greatly because I am gaining so much experience. I am learning what areas of the industry I truly enjoy and want to pursue further, and what areas I don’t feel as strongly about. For example some of the jobs they have been having me doing so far are updating the all of the company’s social media pages, refreshing and maintaining the main monitor that broadcasts the shows, assisting in studio and on location shoots, helping operate the camera, and tomorrow morning I will be getting interviewed for one of the local talk shows (I will send the link to the video of it once I receive it)! Just from working here I already feel that in the future I want to pursue a career in entertainment reporting and TV hosting. I feel that WHHI- TV is the perfect place to begin my career in broadcasting, and I could not feel more honored to have the chance to work here!

Emily Darcy
Journalism/Electronic Media

With my internship starting at the SEC about three week ago, I have already learned so much, more than I could ever imagine in only three weeks without taking a conventional “blackboard” class. Based on what I have learned about financial markets in this short period of time, my expectations have already been far surpassed but that only means it is time to raise those expectations. Being that I am in a regulatory organization, I want to get a more in-depth knowledge of what an individual examiner looks for in every company that is examined. I want to be able to see what tips the examiner off on a breach of a regulation or possible fraud and high risk activity. Although I am in a government agency and focused on the regulatory side of the financial market, I would love to learn more about how the public market functions. I would like to walk away with a much deeper understanding of everything that goes into the running of Wall Street and how it has been able to be so successful and have so much history with only a few setbacks. Having been here for three weeks and being around students that are mostly in graduate school really has given me the most in-depth information I could imagine and I could not be more grateful for this opportunity. Furthermore, a little unrelated to the internship is that I can not wait to learn more about the greatest city in the world, next to Scranton of course! New York City is such an exciting place where you can truly never be bored and that is just one reason I am 100% willing to head to the city every morning around 5:00AM and not get back home until about 8:00PM. They may be long days, but the amount of fun I have and the amount of knowledge I have gained and will gain is priceless.

Dan Muenkel
Accounting/Finance

When starting the Royal Experience I was very much looking forward to really gaining the skills needed to immerse myself in the culinary world. This included the nutrition of food, kitchen techniques, the preparation of different foods and being able to create my own recipes to share with others. I am taking classes in cooking and baking, I am visiting locations to talk and gain real world insight. I am reading books on both food and business methods and seeing how other woman entrepreneurships found their start. I am cooking my way through a cookbook cover to cover in order to try different foods and learn new styles. This internship also allows me to interact with the clients of Weight Watchers and really understand what people want when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. I want to learn how to take those “comfort style foods” and transform them to taste great and be great for you as well.

I designed this internship experience to not only help me better understand the art of cooking, but to also gain knowledge on the business aspect as well. My major is entrepreneurship, and I intend to use these skills to help open my own business in the future. I am creating a nonprofit healthy living café, that will include healthier food options, allow my customers to find fitness and relaxation through yoga and the proceeds will be given to help feed those around the world who cannot afford to; food for food.
 

Going into my internship with the Mayor’s Internship Program of Philadelphia, I initially wanted to learn specifics about database management and data analysis. I have been assigned to work in the Depart of Records where I thought I’d have a great opportunity to learn about real world applications to my major Electronic Commerce, and my minor Operations Management. While I am very happy with the major I chose, I am unsure of what exactly I want to do with it upon graduation. I hope that this internship will help me get a better idea of what I would like to do for my career.

However after working for just two weeks, I discovered there was far more I could learn than just specific computer related information. Within the first day of my internship I was able to not only meet the mayor of Philadelphia, but several other interns from many different schools. I have always thought I was good at communicating with people, but this internship showed me there is still much more I need to learn. Every Friday is reserved for a group project where we are assigned a task to improve a department of the city. This project was much different from projects I have worked on in school because upon completion it will be a tangible product that the City Government will hopefully use. The first meeting our group had, I was a little nervous because my group consisted of students from Harvard and Penn. I felt that the way I talk and manage myself was going to be slightly different from them, and I would have to adjust accordingly. However by the second meeting we were all communicating great and I genuinely enjoy working with them. I hope this internship will allow me to learn more about specifics in my major, communication skills, and networking with employees from different departments.

Protestors of the Philadelphia Soda Tax at City Hall

One of the earliest maps of Philadelphia, found in City Archives

As an Undergraduate Research Assistant at Miami University of Ohio for the summer of 2016, I will not only learn the theory behind advanced organic synthesis reactions toward the production of dendrimers, highly branched molecules with many technological, medical, and industrial uses, but also how to carry out these reactions on my own using various state-of-the-art chemical equipment. While I will work on my own specific reactions in the lab, I will also learn how to work efficiently in a lab research group, in which I will update my mentor and other coworkers on my research, progress, and results every week in a lab group meeting. Toward the end of the program, I will learn how to structure my results into a form fit for publishing in a well-known chemical journal that can not only be used by other chemists, but also understood by the public. The 20 other students in my undergraduate research program will expose me to cultures, viewpoints, and attitudes that I have never experienced before, and help me to develop into a more educated, confident, and well-defined version of myself. My current career path of industrial chemical research involves studying and analyzing problems, coming up with strategies to solve those problems, and adequately expressing the results to others in ways that they can understand, and this program serves as a trial run to my future.

Alex Gardner
Chemistry/Philosphy