Writing this, I find myself over halfway through my internship at BallotReady. It is hard to believe! There is much left to do, but there has been so much I have learned since my last entry. BallotReady provides a wide variety of learning opportunities. Recently, we were introduced to entering officeholder media pages into TAFT Satellite, BallotReady’s database created by their engineering team. In addition, our data team supervisors have been hosting Excel and SQL “jams” or learning sessions. SQL is the programming language used within their databases. As a Global Service major, I have not had much experience with programming and databases. Therefore, these training sessions have been very helpful for me in expanding my set of hard skills as well as boosting my confidence in using them. We have also had the opportunity to watch and participate in lunch and learn sessions every week; thus far, my favorite was a lunch and learn on hot cheetos. There are also future plans for career panels with fellow coworkers which I really look forward to because I admire the BallotReady team.

The social aspects of my internship have been extremely beneficial as well, despite our remote work. We recently had a virtual company retreat which allowed for reflecting on the organization’s progress this year, possible improvements, and for cross-company bonding opportunities. I was surprised and pleased that my intern cohort and I were included. Just by being included, we were able to better our relationships and efficiency as a team. We expressed goals and desires to collaborate together more throughout our journey outside of our weekly intern games event and daily check-ins. From there, we have all made efforts to engage more with one another. I have been overjoyed to learn more from my peers and to develop our friendships. Furthermore, the retreat was an educational experience to see the inner workings of a business and how its people make it evolve. BallotReady’s team is filled with creative young people with inspiring motivation, outside-the-box thinking, and great communication skills. 

Moving forward, I will continue to work on my intern minor where I help the Director of People and Operations consolidate their HR resources. We also will be starting projects on confirming early voting drop box locations and updating normalized positions data. Additionally, my supervisors on the data team have been offering to help me with job preparation before the internship ends. I am the only intern they currently have that has graduated so I greatly appreciate their efforts to guide and support me in my future endeavors.

As I enter the final month of my internship, I will be beginning my hunt for a full-time job. It is a scary time of transition that lies ahead. However, BallotReady has prepared me for entering the workforce and comforts me that they will be here to support me along the way. Through this internship, I have learned that I do not need to limit myself to nonprofit organizations; I can find meaningful work, great teams, and serve others in a variety of ways. I have also seen what it is like to work with an organization that values its employees well-being and how smoothly an organization can run as a community and not a hierarchy. BallotReady inspires me to go out into the world as a leader and person of service that upholds these practices and values. I look forward to learning more from them in this final month and then seeing where they take me into the future.