Fall Semester Internships – Academic Program
More notes about internships from current students in the Fall 2007 Academic Semester.
Maggie writes:
I am working with the editor of the Hyde Park Herald on something resembling an independent research project. We have spent the first few weeks getting to understand the CHA’s plan to move residents out of and demolish various housing developments on the southside. We will also be conducting and transcribing interviews with community members going through the relocation process.
I chose this internship because it is a great mix of the subjects I am studying in college, sociology and ethnic studies, and I have been able to grapple with things like gentrification, segregation, and institutionalized racism as well as other race/class based housing issues.
I will be responsible for gathering and transcribing interviews and through regular discussions with the editor (Gabriel Piedmonte) will get to help decide what best to do with our database.
Michelle writes:
I’m an intern at the Ronald McDonald House in Lincoln Park (a neighborhood north of the Loop). I do anything from office work to projects on my own such as “sibling support.”
Sibling support is a program that basically reasures healthy siblings that they are not forgotten. Parents seem to put all the attention on the sick child and forget to acknowledge them. At the RMH house we provide stationaries to send letters home, phone cards and even a toy store in our basement. We understand that the families that stay at RMH dont have a lot to give but we do. We want them to feel at home and take full advantage of everything our house offers.
I think it’s the little things that makes RMH so special to so many families all over the world. I love when guests say RMH is their “home away from home.”