Week 5 | Sustainable Thinking

Now that I am about halfway through with my virtual internship, I am beginning to think about the sustainability of my efforts. In terms of the tasks, I have been completing, I believe that communication and record-keeping are the best ways of promoting sustainability; so long as my supervisor has an idea of the vision I had in mind in relation to certain projects, graphics, posts, etc. then she can use the content moving forward. These thoughts are also pouring into other facets of my life as I am a couple months away from graduating, meaning that I will also no longer be able to keep my student worker position as a tutor. So, projects/ training that I planned on developing this semester might have to be pushed out to the future, when I can no longer work on them, but others can. This means that once again communication is important as I prepare to hand off what I was working on. Beyond the actual tasks I am completing, the question about how to sustain the lessons from this virtual experience is important. However, I believe that the blog posts do that work. As a Gilman and FEA scholar, my experiences and lessons are being shared with students who may study abroad or, like me, participate in a virtual opportunity. Therefore, they can draw on these weekly blog posts to relate to and understand that the challenges and successes of virtual programs are more common than they realize. I do hope that future scholars take away from these posts, that virtual experiences are not a perfect substitute to being physically abroad, but it can offer very valuable lessons and be worthwhile for professional development.