Newspaper internship a valuable way to spend the summer

I was in summer job limbo in the middle of April when I received a call from Heather Resz, the managing editor here at the Frontiersman, asking if I could start as an intern on May 11. I was thrilled to accept the opportunity and start such an exciting job after my sophomore year of college.

My entire childhood and adolescence was spent growing up in Palmer; I was born at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage and have called Lazy Mountain home ever since. I worked my way through the Mat-Su school system, attending Butte Elementary, Palmer Junior Middle, and Palmer High.

I graduated from the latter in 2012, after which I decided to take a post-graduate year, a preparatory extra year of high school, at a boarding school called the Hill School in Pennsylvania. I made this decision in hopes of improving my undergraduate opportunities, and in the spring of 2013, I chose St. Lawrence University in upstate New York out of a number of excellent opportunities.

St. Lawrence is a liberal arts college with a student population of about 2,000. It’s situated in a tiny town called Canton, approximately an hour away from the border to Canada. The springs are warm and sunny, but the fall and winter can produce temperatures lower than those here in the Valley.

That is not the only similarity that St. Lawrence shares with Alaska. The area also offers just as many outdoor adventures: in the school’s backyard are the Adirondack Mountains, the university runs a canoe shack on the Grasse River (a tributary of the St. Lawrence River), and the slopes in Lake Placid are only a short drive away.

After spending my first semester in London as part of one of the university’s unique first-year programs, I started my second on campus in the spring of 2014. At the moment, I intend to graduate with degrees in economics and computer science.

I enjoy playing club soccer when I am not busy studying, and am a member of the student entertainment committee at St. Lawrence, as well as a staff writer for the university’s newspaper.

That last extracurricular is probably what afforded me my current job here at the Frontiersman. I have only just begun my internship here at the office, but already I can tell that it will not only be valuable exposure to the job world, but also a really fun way to pass the summer. The staff has been nothing but welcoming and kind since I started, and I am already of the notion that I have my work cut out for me in the months to come.

There is undoubtedly a ton of wonderful activities in the Valley and beyond this summer, and my excitement at being able to report on them is boundless. As are most Alaskans, I am really looking forward to a wonderfully busy summer here in the Last Frontier.