Got an Internship!

[FueledByRamen]

Unpaid, of course, but Im glad I got it anyway. My GPA is not great and I really want to go to grad school for planning and focus on transportation. I got this internship with the City of Austin.

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/planning

I will be working with the Long Range Transportation Planning department and the Bike&Pedestrian department at the same time. I will start my internship by helping work on Austin's new Pedestrian Masterplan. I will be quality checking a sidewalk layer produced by a company in Colorado with aerials on some Unix-based GIS system. After that I might be doing some mapping of bike lanes around the city. (The dept. is trying to get some GPS units with ArcPad on them...ESRI sent one that is complementary, but denied a grant). After that, who knows. They need alot of help and have mentioned about 10 things I might work on with them. The only real problem is that their office is downtown and they have no parking. Buses near my apt. do not go by the office, so I have to drive to my church and catch a bus which looks kinda like this:

Anyway, I will post here periodically about things Im sure. Im getting really excited!

Adam

 

[PlannerGirl]

Congrats

Congrats on the internship. I have long held internships are the single best thing for new planners or folks thinking about being planners, you get your hands dirty and find out what planning is like outside the ivory tower.

Good luck and keep us up to date.

 

[JNA]

Congrats on the Internship.

When I was in grad school my Internship Exprience was great and
the pay off comes when you are applying / interviewing for a job.

 

[SGB]

Internships rock! Congratulations!

[geek mode]
If you pull the ol' Vulcan mind meld on your supervisors, you may be able to land a director's position somewhere without having to do that graduate degree after all.
[/geek mode]

 

[nerudite]

I had three different interships during University and they were much better at teaching me planning than my degree. I was really lucky to have great supervisors that challenged me and mentored me. Seize the opportunity and get all you can out of it!

 

[mendelman]

good luck with the internship

 

[Richmond Jake]

Congrats. :b: This will be a benefit to your career.

 

[otterpop]

Congrats on the internship. My two internships were very important to getting my planning career started. I was lucky that mine were both paid internships.

 

[Gedunker]

As others have already written, internships are exceptionally valuable experience. Make the most of it. And don't hesitate to point out your incredible devotion to the planning profession by accepting an unpaid position. Just make sure future employers don't get any ideas . . . ;-) Best wishes!

 

[annie]

cheap labor rocks!

I worked 1 1/2 years as a transportation planner, never left the office, and never did much more than typing emails and copying numbers from one map to another. I quit, and am now an intern with a non-profit that works with community groups to buy land for state parks and trails. I am often the voice of the organization and am doing a super cool project to get a bike trail connecting two cities along the Mississippi.

Who knew that a "demotion" of job titles would exponentially increase my responsibility! Unfortunately (of course), it's not paid, but i'll just be an even poorer student in the fall!

 

[FueledByRamen]

Wow, thanks guys! I start next wednesday, Ill let yall know how my first day goes.

Congrats on the Internship.

When I was in grad school my Internship Exprience was great and
the pay off comes when you are applying / interviewing for a job.

Yeah, so I just woke up and I thought you said "When I was in grad school my Internet Explorer was great..."

:-D