{"id":20171,"date":"2023-05-11T17:06:18","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T17:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=20171"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T23:00:08","slug":"story-writing-intern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/05\/story-writing-intern\/","title":{"rendered":"Story-writing intern brings ideas together"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internships are an integral part of most students\u2019 experience at Macalester. There are  over 200 internship sites within eight miles of campus and a center to help students navigate the internship process. What\u2019s most important though is that students learn more about their career aspirations and make valuable connections with people in fields they hope to pursue after graduation.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julia Chamberland ’23; Grinnell, Iowa
Environmental Studies and Geography (double major); concentration in Food, Agriculture, and Society<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As part of her environmental studies capstone, Julia Chamberland has been working as a story-writing intern for <\/span>Minnesota Upstream<\/span><\/a>, an initiative that shares stories of environmental stewardship from Minnesotans of all backgrounds and political ideologies. In her role, she reaches out to Upstream partner organizations (such as non-profits, small businesses, and universities) and writes stories about what they are doing to care for natural places in Minnesota.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs someone who identifies as progressive, working towards bridging differences and connecting to people who are different from me politically and in other ways is very important to me,\u201d Chamberland said. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Upstream and what do they do?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the organization\u2019s \u201cculture change\u201d campaign, we try to amplify and celebrate the ways all Minnesotans from all backgrounds are caring for our natural places. Our main task is to figure out how we can highlight what people from all backgrounds are doing to care for a place, and how that can bring people together in a cohesive culture of environmental care and sustainability. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What have you learned in doing this work? <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason that I even considered reaching out to them is because I\u2019m also a geography major, and I liked the way the organization was very \u2018place-focused.\u2019 At Upstream, we\u2019re constantly thinking about how people from many backgrounds may think about their places very differently, but at the same time, discover common ground in how we care for our places. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like the mission of Upstream and the idea that they want to bridge differences to be able to connect people. It\u2019s a challenge. They try to showcase a broad range of stories. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also have other initiatives like a \u201cbackyard conversations\u201d project where they bring people from different backgrounds or ideologies together to talk about environmental issues. It\u2019s an interesting and evolving organization. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does your workday typically look like? <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I work from home typically in the morning, so I might start off by emailing with Upstream\u2019s organizational partners to find times when we can connect for interviews. I might spend some time talking with a partner, writing up my notes on the story and then connecting with them again to check the story. Sometimes, I get to interview folks in person or attend events, which is super fun. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve also been working on a couple of projects. One is outreach-focused, bringing in higher education institutions in Minnesota to become Upstream partners. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another project we\u2019re working on is called \u201cFind-Your-Next.\u201d We\u2019re going to launch a digital web-based tool so that Minnesotans interested in environmental care can network about what they can do for sustainability. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the most challenging part of the job?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that I\u2019ve been brought into the organization, I\u2019m realizing that reaching out to people by email takes a lot of patience and persistence. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is something you\u2019ve learned within this field and about yourself? <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel that I’ve really honed my communication skills through this internship. I’ve also picked up some new skills along the way like learning how to take professional photos with the help of student staff at the Digital Resource Center (DRC). In terms of myself, I think that remote work has been really hard. I\u2019m a senior and I\u2019m going to go out working next year, and I\u2019ve realized how important interacting with people is. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is something special about this internship that you felt you haven\u2019t had in previous ones?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a past internship I\u2019ve done, I felt like I didn\u2019t have a lot of direction and that they just needed another employee to do the work that other people didn\u2019t want to do, which I understand. In this position, however, it feels like I\u2019m being given a lot more autonomy. It surprised me at first, but I\u2019ve been given more creative license and they trust me to talk with partners as well as be a face of the organization. It\u2019s been really encouraging that my supervisor has placed that kind of trust in me.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of her environmental studies capstone, Julia Chamberland has been writing stories for Minnesota Upstream.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":20177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internships-and-careers","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20171"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30153,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20171\/revisions\/30153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}