Sipping Water from a Fire Hose – Institute for Leadership and Service Blog

A little over 4 months ago, I remember going to bed especially frustrated with myself. My friends were all talking about internship prospects, and I hadn’t sent out a single internship application. The next morning I woke up to find an email from the coordinator of health care leadership program inviting me to apply to be a member of the first cohort of CAPS Fellows.

The road to my fellowship was not easy, but subjecting myself to the process has proved itself to be continuously rewarding. I wrote countless drafts for the personal reflection aspect of my application, trying to drill it down to fit the parameters of the requirements as well as trying to infuse as much of myself into it as possible. I mentioned in my essay that I had an interest in healthcare for seniors, but never could have imagined finding myself where I am right now. Right now I’m sitting on a couch, actually. But I’m not just sitting on any couch. I’m sitting on a couch in a cottage. An independent living cottage, as a matter of fact, as well as my home for the summer. The only reason I am where I am now (literally and figuratively) is because I was given the opportunity to serve at a cutting edge senior care organization this summer. I had a conversation this morning with a neighbor of mine who told me “This is the Rolls-Royce of retirement communities. My old place was Cadillac. But this is Rolls-Royce.” When I applied to be a CAPS Fellow, I was so desperate to find something to do for the summer that I never really stopped to consider that the CAPS program could have anything in store for me pertaining to my major, my long term goals, and my needs as a young adult in need of some guidance. With graduation less than a year away, my efforts this summer are all a part of my journey to finding my Calling And Purpose in Society (CAPS), both vocationally and spiritually.

This summer, part of my experience will be interning at corporate National Lutheran Communities and Services under the Chief Strategy Officer as well as the Chief Philanthropy Officer, working on developing a business plan for a community impact program as well as working to develop a grants tracking process. Another aspect of my experience will be interning at one of NLCS’s continuous care retirement communities, The Village at Rockville (TVAR), as a health care administration intern. At TVAR I will be learning as much as I can about what goes on in a CCRC (continuous care retirement community) as well as working to collect data to build an emergency contact system called EverBridge for employees and the family and friends of residents.

Lastly, one day a week I will be going on various field trips around the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia).
A few of the field trips lined up so far include:
The Village at Orchard Ridge and The Legacy at North Augusta (NLCS communities in VA)
Two Fellowship Square communities (the HUD housing projects NLCS recently acquired management of)
The Pentagon
The Cato Institute
A home health agency
A for-profit skilled nursing facility

Needless to say, they’re going to be keeping us busy in Rockville and no possible experiences will be left out! I’m keeping a Word document list so that at the end of the summer I can recall everything I’ve been exposed to. It’s up to two full pages. Topics I have learned about have ranged from a corporate compliance meeting at NLCS to case management at morning stand-up at TVAR. My first day of work I sat next to the CEO at lunch. NLCS truly is a family and they have been very welcoming and open with me. Being the curious person that I am, I’ve picked the brains of quite a few of my co-workers in regards to what exactly it is that they do. It is clear through the conversations that I have had that everyone I have encountered has wanted nothing more than to teach me as much as possible. I’m really hoping that this internship can shine a light on where my place in this system will be so that someday it can be me helping a college student with finding a place in my industry.

My biggest struggle so far came this morning, and it was brought on by something that up until today I was actually enjoying. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’ve always been an avid reader. My media of choice growing up was my older brother’s textbooks. Needless to say, learning is something I enjoy. In the last 7 days, I’ve received somewhere above 500 pages in articles and reports to read through as background material for my Strategic Outreach internship project at corporate. To me, that kind of reading is exciting and interesting. However, until this internship my outlets for new information have been pretty cut and dry. I can take information and write a paper, take information and hold a conversation about it, and take information and respond with a few arguments against it without having to put significant thought into it. Before this morning, I had never been asked to put together a business plan. I will have plenty of time to work on this plan, as well as an abundance of resources. I won’t even be the sole author of this plan. But the idea of embarking on a the process of compiling information into a medium I’d never encountered before terrified me. After my morning meeting with Dan, the Chief Strategy Officer, I sat down and tried to map out exactly how writing it in the next three weeks would go. When I realized that I was drowning so deep in information that I no longer had sight of the project the business plan was supposed to be about, I felt useless.

Connecting the project an organization has in mind, along with its ministry, along with its mission, and along with its capacity to carry out a plan is impossible when you find yourself so deep in information that you no longer have sight of the end goal. I reached out to Dan, and our second conversation of the day finally helped me to nail down exactly what project my business plan is about. The information I had in my head could finally be compartmentalized, and I could finally start planning out my course of action. In our talk, Dan admitted that he had a tendency to give sips of water via fire hose. My summer as a Strategic Outreach intern will consist of composing a business plan just as much as it will consist of learned how to sip water from a fire hose the proper way. In retrospect, every day of the past two weeks the information I have acquired has been presented to me rapidly. It’s up to me to pick through the information I receive and to figure out when to stop listening and start asking questions, and how to organize the way I store my information more effectively.

In a few weeks I will be blogging again. I hope that in a few weeks I can talk about my business plan and list of a few more things I’ve accomplished. I also hope that in a few weeks I can look back on the struggles I had today in perfect confusion about my overreaction. Reflection is a beautiful thing.