Outreach Intern at the Center for Legislative Archives
June - August 2017 • Washington, DC
What I liked
I really enjoyed the environment everyone was extremely friendly and encouraging.
What I wish was different
Advice
Great experience learning about working in an archive, teaching, and historical research
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Archival Intern
June - August 2018 • Washington, DC
What I liked
I loved being able to come into a daily and direct contact with our nation's founding records.
What I wish was different
Advice
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Service Provider
September 2017 • Washington, DC
What I liked
I liked the flexibility my supervisor allowed me to have with my working hours and my coworkers.
What I wish was different
I don't wish for a single thing to be different at all.
Advice
If there is an opportunity to work at the NARA, take it without hesitation.
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Public and Media Communications Intern
June - August 2017 • Washington, DC
What I liked
I loved working with my team and being given responsibilities such as creating a social media campaign, helping create content for the social media accounts, leading a Facebook Live, and assisting with other events.
What I wish was different
I think that some of the expectations for my position could have been clearer and the day-to-day work that I needed to complete for various projects.
Advice
Ask questions and let your team now that you are willing to take on more responsibilities, because after a while they will start giving you more to work on and it will give you more opportunities to prove yourself.
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Archives Technician Intern- Electronic Records Accessioning division
May - August 2017 • College Park, MD
What I liked
NARA provides an excellent work environment and a great intern culture. There were about 20 interns this summer in the Reference and Processing divisions, where I worked. We had lunch together every day and hung out several times outside of work. The intern coordinator also planned a variety of events specifically for the interns throughout the summer so we could see the different departments in NARA. My supervisor was also great to work with. Electronic Records Accessioning is a very small subdivision in charge of facilitating between the Archival side and the IT side. The other ERA intern and I got to perform a wide variety of tasks, and our days had much more variety than that of many of the other interns. I liked sitting in meetings with senior leadership on our main project of developing a new digital platform for agencies to submit documents to NARA. It felt like our work was valuable and people were interested in what we had to say.
What I wish was different
Some of the tasks could be pretty boring, and through the experience I learned that I am not really interesting in archival work as a career. Many of the other interns had an amazing experience, and if you are interested in history and library/information science, NARA is really a dream place to work.
Advice
Ask your supervisor if you can work in different departments for a day or two! Everyone wanted the interns to maximize their experience, and when I expressed interest in seeing what it was like in one of the different departments I was able to work there for a day, which was a great experience.