So what does Maddi actually do???
Well, now that there’s only a month left of my internship, I figure I might as well tell you all what I’ve actually been up to. (Lol… “actually”… makes it sound like this is all just a coverup and I’ve really been doing something nefarious this whole time.)
Anyway, here’s the crash course in ‘What Maddi’s Been Doing for the Past 4 Months’
So I am the Digital Media Intern at Prince William Forest Park, a national park in Triangle, VA about 35 minutes south of DC. My internship is funded/run by Conservation Legacy, a program under AmeriCorps that works to place young adults into internship positions or conservation corps across the country (among other thing).
My job responsibilities are largely split up into two main categories…
Updating the park’s existing media to make sure it’s all Section 508 compliant (aka accessible). What this looks like, practically, is writing/recording/editing audio descriptions for videos, writing audio descriptions for images, transcribing oral histories, adding closed captions to videos, and I even created a complete audio described version of the park’s brochure.
Making a park film! While the scope of this project has changed over time, I am responsible for producing a video for the park from pre-production all the way through editing the final product (not new for me). While it was originally slated to be a longer film on the park’s history, for the sake of time and feasibility we’ve oped for a shorter video on the park’s natural resources… which is a win for me since now I just get to walk around and look for cool plants/animals/insects :)
On top of this, part of my position also became to capture some of the park’s interpretive programs (like Spy Camp) and resource management endeavors through photographs to be used on the site and social media. Oh… and I also worked Spy Camp (the park’s most popular interpretive program where kids spend 3 days at the park learning the skills it takes to be spies, just like the OSS did here back in the 1930s) as one of the ‘counselors.’
Of course, there might be some other minor assignments here and there but for the most part, this gives you a sense of what my internship entails. I spend most of my days working out of the basement of the Visitor Center but lately, my days have been filled with a lot more hiking as I roam about the park looking for footage to capture. During my time here, I’ll have some less traditional days that involve going off-site like trips to other national parks in the area or going to intern career days but really, this is what it is.
