Patrick Melendez

Internship

Internship Closing Report 

          For my Internship I worked for the Episcopal Diocese of California under the office of Discipleship Ministries. For much of my work, particularly in the beginning, I worked at DioHouse (the offices of the diocese). Some my work was able completed at home as long as I kept my supervisors updated. My supervisors were Julia McCray-Goldsmith and Jennifer Snow both from the department of Discipleship Ministries. At the beginning of my internship my supervisors told me that I would not be doing any “ordinary internship” so what they did is that I got assigned a particular project the organization of the Official Youth Presence. This was not what I was thinking that I was going to do. I thought I would have to doing filing work and other “business like stuff” (which I still did on top of my project). At first I believed that the project would be easy but then I quickly learned this was not the case.

   

         The project included a lot of work and a variety of different parts. At first I had to actually create the project, the Diocese of California Official Youth Presence has not really been a huge thing before. The 2012 Diocesan Convention was the first time there was an Official Youth Presence in California and that was a quick last minute put together. So it was not as good as it could have been. I have some experience being on the Official Youth Presence for General Convention (the entire Episcopal Church) so I started with the GCOYP as a base and worked my way in creating a more local based program. A job that I did regularly was send emails to people. This also turned out to be my biggest obstacle. I hate sending emails in the first place, so having to do it regularly was bad enough. But the biggest email difficulty was contacting the Presidents of the Deaneries. It took many of them a few days to respond and it was just irritating to just wait. Not to mention the Presidents of the South Alameda and Contra Costa Deaneries did not even understand what the Official Youth Presence was. It was an ongoing process with these presidents answering questions and trying to create a relationship (many of these emails I did not even include in my log). In the end though I was able to bear through this difficulty and have good communication. Another duty I had was organizing my “bosses” filing. Although Jenifer and Julie are good about filing, they decided that I should develop my organizing skills (and so they could focus on other tasks at hand). I also had to gather information in order to progress in my project. Examples of information are contact info of youth reps or the amount of money that is put aside for this project. I usually gained this information in meetings with other people or during my “check in” with my supervisors. From all of this work I learned a lot about “real life” and “myself.”

       

         I personally believe that the most important part of an internship is what you get out of it. I learned a lot from my internship, more than I really expected. Despite being extremely involved in the Episcopal Church I never really knew how the staff side of things worked. By being in the staff environment I was able to discover that the staff is what really makes the Church run. It is almost like a business with all different levels, (finance, communication, specialized departments, ect…). In addition, I learned a lot about myself. I have realized that the occupation I should be looking for requires more action. Planning and organizing events are not particularly my greatest interest. I need to be going out and doing something rather than just staying in an office. I have also learned that I would really prefer a job where I can have a conversation with people face to face. When I had meeting with my supervisors and people from other departments it went well. But when I had to communicate via email things were a little choppy and took a lot longer because it would be an ongoing conversation. I am glad to have taken this internship and gain an important life experience.

 



 

My Internship 

 

My Internship was with the Diocese of California under the ofice of Discipleship Minitries. My sponcers were Julia Mcray-Goldsmith and Jennifer Snow. I worked at the "Diohouse" in San Francisco (the smaller buliding to the frount right of the catheldral in the picture). For my intership I worked on a project in creating a program for the Official Youth Presence at Dioesen Convention along with some paper/filing work.