Duncan’s Summer Internship Experience
I can’t believe it’s all gone by so fast. To imagine I’ve been a part of Passion Impact for almost exactly a year now, and while I must admit some of that feeling of a time jump can be attributed to Covid making every day a blur; I think this one can should be more attributed to the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun”. I’m really actually surprised that I feel like it went by so fast, like while the reasoning for it, being a fun phrase, is pretty rock solid. Just solely due to the amount of change I’ve gone through in the past year, I really think that looking back on it, it should feel like a lot more time.
Before I joined PI I deep down honestly thought that people only engaged in volunteerism for two purposes, 1. To build their college resume, and 2. To fane altruism for their own selfish ego related reasons. Yes, I was indeed a pessimistic little rascal. I, a now changed and reformed rascal, through this internship have found the third, and in my humble opinion, best reason to commit to volunteerism; that reason is community, and the joy of meaningful work. Once I found these motivators, I really truly could not believe the work I was able to complete, actually, no, calling it work does it no justice, this is service. From planning events, to co-creating and co-running the now established Student Advisory Board (an organizational limb of Passion impact which is working towards achieving greater student representation on it’s Board of Directors), there is nothing that brings me the same joy that serving with Passion Impact does.
More explicitly through this internship I was able to focus more on my relationship to civic engagement. Learning about social justice through creative sources, leadership and how to best function on a team, and how my identity affects, and is affected, by the world around me, were just a few of the many journeys of self reflection we went on. Personally, these activities most of the time enlightened me to questions I had never really considered, usually setting off a chain of unconsidered questions that I’ll spend my time going over in my head. I think that this has been these activities’ most important lasting impacts, as so much self growth comes from answering these questions for yourselves. This internship has been an amazing experience and I eagerly await getting to work with the new VEP members this school year.