Part 1
What did you learn about your own work from your internship project? As my work at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park is coming to an end, I am looking back at the first initial weeks to remember what goals I came up with. One of these goals I had for myself was to use a skill that I learned at the Safari Park and apply it to my daily school work, or just any work in general. As a Horticulturists at the zoo it is important to always run through your daily checklist to see what needs to be taken care of that day. Throughout the three weeks of doing my tasks and following my schedules I learned that the most important skill that I needed to use was time management. It is important to stay focused with all your tasks to be able to get them done on time, this way we'll be able to cross them off of our daily checklists. With my work and project specifically I learned that my day was much more productive and complete when I kept my eyes on the clock even if that meant leave a job incomplete because of break or lunch then return to it later. How did your project go from an idea or inspiration to a final product? Although my project is not really done I feel like I can still answer this question to the fullest. Our project (if you haven't already read that post) is a crevice garden, a garden with plants planted in between rocks. This project started out from pictures of other gardens. We had rocks and we had some plants but we didn't have an established plan. We kind of just thought "lets just put it together one by one and wherever it takes us, we'll go". We started be placing the decomposed granite all around our land and moved on to placing the large and medium rocks and now we are placing smaller rocks. We will start planting nearing next week. But our project really formed as we did it. We took it on one piece at a time and built it off of our previous step. We would place one rock and then the next one would form from that one. We continued this method until all the large and most of the medium rocks had been placed. Part 2 What new appreciations did you develop while working as an intern? Why? Through my internship, I've gained an appreciation for plants and plant care takers. It might sound a little silly at first but hear me out. I knew a little bit about Horticulture through a little bit of research, when I joined, but I didn't know what it was exactly going to be like until I was given my first task, pulling weeds. Every time I walk around a park or a mall, or a house I always look at the grasses and trees and wonder how they are so well maintained, and now I am the one maintaining them, at the Safari Park. I didn't really know how much work it is to take care of plants, they are living and so much like an animal it is mind-blowing. They have to the perfect amount of water, sun soil, placed in the right shade around the right plants, you have to be so precise and perfect. Plants also require pruning and hedging and trimming and cutting, like plant haircuts. I truly admire the people who are behind the plants and also the magnificent plants themselves. How might internship influence the direction of your life? My future career paths are hopefully in the engineering field, so going into a field related to animals was honestly really different. I was gonna be working with plants around animals for 4 weeks, how was I going to hold up? Like I've mentioned in some previous blog posts I truly loved it. The experience does require a lot of work but it is really rewarding once it is over. I've decided that I am open to career paths in a field related to animals, working outdoors around animals like the ones at The Safari Park is truly sensational, you get to hear the lions roar every morning and the birds chirping and singing it is truly unique. |