Exploring Careers with Fellow Pioneers

From New Student Orientation through graduation day, the Center for Careers, Life, and Service is committed to helping students prepare for their post-graduate careers. One popular initiative is the Spring Break Externship Program, which matches students and alumni for a three- to five-day job shadow and homestay. Below, students who participated in externships in 2016 share their stories and offer advice:

Explore

“Shadow someone in an area you’ve never considered.”

When Rayyon Robinson ’19 applied to spend a week of spring break externing with university archivist Melissa Torres ’02, she had no idea what to expect.

“What interested me about Melissa and her work is that I had never encountered it before,” she says. “I didn’t have any interest in being a librarian or an archivist. I didn’t really even know what that meant.”

But after spending several days immersed in the archives, Robinson emerged with a fresh perspective. “I saw how important [Torres] was to the community of the university, and I realized that libraries interact with their communities in ways that no one else does,” she explains. “By knowing what someone is reading, you can guess what type of person they are, and you can help bring knowledge to that person and their community.”

Today, the intended independent major in black art and expression is considering librarianship as a potential career.

To students who are considering applying for an externship, Robinson offers these words of advice: “Try to shadow someone in an area that you know nothing about, that you’ve never even considered. It can help inform you about what you’re interested in, and show you different things about the world.”

“You’re a growing person throughout your whole life.”

Robinson also credits her externship experience with exposing her to the diversity of Grinnellians’ post-graduate trajectories. Over nightly dinner conversations with Melissa and her husband Gus Torres ’03, Robinson learned that Gus had graduated with a major in economics before deciding to attend law school and become an attorney.

“What I took away from it was that this is just a stopping point, this isn’t your whole life,” she explains. “Even if you were to graduate in something, or love something in college, that can change. You’re a growing person throughout your whole life.”

Connect

“I showed him the GIS map I made for my environmental chemistry class.”

On paper, Ben Hoekstra ’19 and Doug Wood ’97 seemed to be an externship mismatch. Hoekstra is an intended chemistry major; Wood was an anthropology major who now works in viticulture and listed his industry as “Computer/ITS” on Grinnell’s externship posting board.

What do chemistry, anthropology, information technology, and wine have in common?

As it turns out, more than you might expect. Over the weeklong externship, Wood taught Hoekstra the basics of geographic information systems (GIS) software, a critical tool that he uses daily as viticulture technology coordinator at Scheid Vineyards in Salinas, California.

In the wine industry, GIS is increasingly being used to plot and manage data related to all aspects of vineyard cultivation. “They used to have the details of the rootstalk, the phenotype, and the water program in this big old binder, which is hefty and not useful,” Hoekstra explains. “Doug has put all of that information into geospatial imaging software, so you can see the plots visually on a map and access all of the relevant data.”

Hoekstra, who is considering a concentration in environmental science in addition to his chemistry major, was intrigued by the software’s utility and possibilities. “GIS can be applied to all sorts of industries, including hydrology — water studies,” he says. “I ended up using it in a project for an environmental science class later that semester, and I showed Doug the GIS map I made.”

“Doug was my mentor, and Jon was his mentor, and now I’m working with Jon.”

Externships also help students tap into the broader Grinnell community, a network that is as intensely connected as it is widely dispersed.

“Doug and I connected really well, not only on a professional interest level, but also on a personal one,” says Hoekstra. “We had great conversations about our experiences at Grinnell, the study abroad he did, stories he had. It was really fun connecting with him.”

During one of those conversations, Wood praised his former faculty adviser Jon Andelson ’70, Rosenfield Professor in Social Science-Anthropology and director of the Center for Prairie Studies. Hoekstra took note.

“I think what I got most out of my externship was an appreciation for agriculture, and for the environmental science that is involved with a large-scale agricultural operation” he says. “When I got back to Grinnell, I became more interested in the Center for Prairie Studies, and I got in contact with Jon.”

Hoekstra is now an editor for Rootstalk, the Center’s primary publication. Described on its website as “a prairie journal of culture, science, and the arts,” Rootstalk explores issues of culture, politics, and environmental conservation through the lens of the Midwest prairie region.

Of Andelson? “He’s the greatest,” says Hoekstra. “It’s really cool to have that through line where Doug was my mentor, and Jon was his mentor, and now I’m working with Jon.”

Reflect

“I realized that our shared major could mean so many different things.”

At Grinnell, only a handful of students from any given class year pursue an independent major. Of those who do, fewer still concentrate their studies in the same area as another student.

But scrolling through the externship database, Kaya Prasad ’19 noticed an alumna who had graduated with the same independent major she was currently pursuing: international development.

Prasad applied, and was accepted, to extern with Emily Hamilton ’02, executive director of Des Moines’ I Have a Dream Foundation (IHAD). I Have a Dream was started after businessman Eugene M. Lang pledged to pay the college tuitions of an entire sixth-grade class at the East Harlem elementary school he had attended as a child. Today, more than 200 satellite IHAD organizations provide wraparound services to ensure that children in low-income communities have the academic, social/emotional, and financial support they need to pursue higher education.

Prasad, who is interested in working with community development in the area of education, was struck by the similarities she and Hamilton shared. Equally illuminating, however, were their differences.

“Emily took a biology and environmental perspective on [international development], whereas I’m thinking of coming at it from the economics and political science side. It was interesting to realize that our shared major could mean so many things, and that it’s such an interdisciplinary field,” says Prasad.

“This is real, this is her life, and she came from Grinnell.”

To students who are considering applying for an externship, Prasad offers this advice:

“Do it! You’ll learn so many things that you don’t expect to learn, and it also gives you a sense of why you’re investing in your college education,” she explains.

“Talking to an alumna about how she took her experience from Grinnell and moved into a career from there makes it seem real. You hear stories about what people have gone on to do after Grinnell, but it’s different sitting in the car driving to the grocery store with someone and chatting about it, seeing oh, this is real, this is her life, and she came from Grinnell.”

To learn more about the Spring Break Externship Program, including how to apply, visit its page on the CLS website. A list of 2017 externship hosts will be posted in January.