What is LINK?
At Animas High School, as part of the curriculum all juniors have a three-week internship opportunity presented to them in May called LINK. During these three weeks, juniors take time off of school to work with businesses and organizations both inside of and outside of Durango. These three weeks for LINK are to give the juniors a taste of the real world, and to see if the career types they interned under are something they want to continue to pursue or discover it's not for them.
My LINK Internship
Mentor: Ryan Finnigan
CarbonForm Design - Owner - Lead Designer
Durango MakerLab - Co-Founder
Powerhouse Science Center - Board of Directors
CarbonForm Design is a high-end decretive metal art business that services all around the four-corners area. With a classy design that meets the clients needs, CarbonForm excels at provide excellence above all else. Located in the Animas Airpark, just a few minutes outside of Durango.
The MakerLab is a branch off of the PowerHouse Science Center that is a space for people to come and learn about machines, how to use them, and to also provide a space where people can create and invent together. Located next to the PowerHouse, the MakerLab is a family-friendly space for all sorts of creativity to be unleashed. The MakerLab and Science Center believe that interactive discovery plus science education should be available to everyone; as it fosters a love of learning and develops creative, critical thinkers.
CarbonForm Design - Owner - Lead Designer
Durango MakerLab - Co-Founder
Powerhouse Science Center - Board of Directors
CarbonForm Design is a high-end decretive metal art business that services all around the four-corners area. With a classy design that meets the clients needs, CarbonForm excels at provide excellence above all else. Located in the Animas Airpark, just a few minutes outside of Durango.
The MakerLab is a branch off of the PowerHouse Science Center that is a space for people to come and learn about machines, how to use them, and to also provide a space where people can create and invent together. Located next to the PowerHouse, the MakerLab is a family-friendly space for all sorts of creativity to be unleashed. The MakerLab and Science Center believe that interactive discovery plus science education should be available to everyone; as it fosters a love of learning and develops creative, critical thinkers.
LINK Preparation
At the start of this process I was unsure of where to go and what to do, but here are the steps I took. I started by taking a few surveys to see what I was interested in as well as to filter out things I know I wouldn't want to do. After finding the few things that I could see myself doing, I researched companies in town that specialized in those areas. I ran into many challenges along the way, people not responding to emails, opportunities sounding amazing one minute but boring the next, and not to mention having a vast number of options and no idea where to go. While I never had anyone say 'no' to me interning with them, many just wouldn't respond. It worked out in the end however, when after contacting around three people and only receiving one reply, I was approached by a man who was on the board of directors at the Powerhouse Science Center who gave me a tour of the Maker space and helped me to get in contact with the co-founder and creator, Ryan Finnigan. I decided to go with the opportunity because it opens a lot of doors in terms of interests as I can really do anything at the Maker space. I hope to gain as much knowledge as I can from this opportunity as well as learn about if this is an area that I would like to make a career out of. I hope that I can bring a sense of accomplishment and hard working attitude to this business and hopefully inspire others to find what they like to do as well. I hope I can leave my internship with my mentor being proud to work with me, and I would like to leave my mark by helping others reach success along with me.
LINK Project
For my LINK project, my mentor and I decided to invent and create a DJ MIDI Controller from scratch. The controller basically takes information from the switches and buttons we touch and turns it into data that can be used by music production software such as Ableton Live. To start, I designed and welded together the base of my controller, learning welding skills in the process. After finishing the base, we started working on the top of the controller which turned out to be a pretty interesting design. For this top, we laser-cut and acrylic panel and then melted it over the top of the base. Next, all we needed was the internal components which required us to put all of the electronics together and code up the software using Arduino.
LINK Reflection
At the start of my LINK internship, I was pretty nervous because I didn't think that I would have any skills that I could use so that I could just jump in and start inventing. It turned out that I was wrong and that I did have a few skills that were super helpful that I didn't realize I needed. The first one was just having good listening skills, as there were a lot of projects I did that had a lot of details, and if I hadn't been listening than I might have annoyed my mentor by asking what I needed to do again and again and again. I don't think I had any hard skills that I knew at the beginning of this project such as coding skills, or the ability to weld. I did find, however, that being able to manage my time came in handy quite a few times, where my mentor would go to a meeting and I would have a bunch of stuff that I would need to do, so I had to choose between finishing my required tasks and goofing off using the laser-cutter.
I think that the most important skills I developed during link were mainly physical instead of mental. A specific example of this would be learning soldering skills, which is where you connect wires and circuits using melted metal. The reason this was one of the most important skills I learned was because I needed to solder almost every day, both because my LINK project would not function without me being able to solder, and because we had middle schoolers come in to learn electronics, and I got to teach them how to solder. Along these lines, another important skill I learned was to code using Arduino software. While I still struggle a lot with Arduino I found that it was important because it is essentially the internals of my project and allows everything to function
I feel that I grew during LINK in multiple ways through the challenges that popped up, even though it was pretty smooth for the first couple of days. I feel that I grew as an adaptive thinker during LINK because most of the challenges that occurred were because we wired something together the wrong way or had a line of code that wasn't logical. The reason I think this caused me to grow as an adaptive thinker is that all of the challenges that occurred could be solved with a little bit of thinking and tweaking. I guess that in the end I simply grew as a person because coming out of LINK I found that high school is just the beginning and there is so much to explore in this world. Not only this, but I found that I grew in maturity, and while being pretty mature at the start, I feel like I have a lot more experience coming out of this.
Why is this type of internship important for future students? Well, I think that this is one of the most important internships that there are. It was amazing to be able to have an internship where I could explore so many different areas of work. Being able to go to work one day and work on electronics and then the next day be in a heavy jacket welding metal, and probably melting it too, was absolutely awesome. The reason we need to have this internship for future students is because it is perfect for people like me, who want to explore as much as they can and change it up every single day. The reason the MakerLab should accept high school interns in the future is because we need to give kids more options in life and not just annoy them with the question, "Do you know what you want to do with your life?" Maybe we just don't know and need to explore.
This internship experience has helped my place for my next steps for college and career in more than one way. The big thing for me was learning that it's ok to not know what I want to do with my life or what I want to study in college. It showed me that I can go to college for one thing but work with something else if that is what I feel is right. It taught me that I can take my favorite hobbies and turn them into careers. Going forward, I know that I can stop looking at high-end colleges simply because I want to go to a high-end college. My next steps are to find a place where I can create my life around something that I am passionate about and not something others expect of me such as making money and doing the normal.
I think that the most important skills I developed during link were mainly physical instead of mental. A specific example of this would be learning soldering skills, which is where you connect wires and circuits using melted metal. The reason this was one of the most important skills I learned was because I needed to solder almost every day, both because my LINK project would not function without me being able to solder, and because we had middle schoolers come in to learn electronics, and I got to teach them how to solder. Along these lines, another important skill I learned was to code using Arduino software. While I still struggle a lot with Arduino I found that it was important because it is essentially the internals of my project and allows everything to function
I feel that I grew during LINK in multiple ways through the challenges that popped up, even though it was pretty smooth for the first couple of days. I feel that I grew as an adaptive thinker during LINK because most of the challenges that occurred were because we wired something together the wrong way or had a line of code that wasn't logical. The reason I think this caused me to grow as an adaptive thinker is that all of the challenges that occurred could be solved with a little bit of thinking and tweaking. I guess that in the end I simply grew as a person because coming out of LINK I found that high school is just the beginning and there is so much to explore in this world. Not only this, but I found that I grew in maturity, and while being pretty mature at the start, I feel like I have a lot more experience coming out of this.
Why is this type of internship important for future students? Well, I think that this is one of the most important internships that there are. It was amazing to be able to have an internship where I could explore so many different areas of work. Being able to go to work one day and work on electronics and then the next day be in a heavy jacket welding metal, and probably melting it too, was absolutely awesome. The reason we need to have this internship for future students is because it is perfect for people like me, who want to explore as much as they can and change it up every single day. The reason the MakerLab should accept high school interns in the future is because we need to give kids more options in life and not just annoy them with the question, "Do you know what you want to do with your life?" Maybe we just don't know and need to explore.
This internship experience has helped my place for my next steps for college and career in more than one way. The big thing for me was learning that it's ok to not know what I want to do with my life or what I want to study in college. It showed me that I can go to college for one thing but work with something else if that is what I feel is right. It taught me that I can take my favorite hobbies and turn them into careers. Going forward, I know that I can stop looking at high-end colleges simply because I want to go to a high-end college. My next steps are to find a place where I can create my life around something that I am passionate about and not something others expect of me such as making money and doing the normal.