28 Jun Midday and midway through [my internship] – John George

The past 6 weeks have gone at a rapid pace. I’ve been able to learn about National Park rules and regulations, the amount of red tape that bears utmost priority with any proposed solutions and a preview of the wheel of responsibilities that an individual Park Ranger can have. It is sufficient to say that there is always someone who could use a helping hand because of the large workload everyone has. My experience so far has taught me to not take any time for granted and to schedule the week’s duties far ahead of time.

The Interpretation division (my present division) deals mainly with the history of the site, including the method and presentation and/or the accounting of physical objects that are historically significant.  The latter is the job of one of my co-workers who’s titled the Museum Technician. The ‘Interp’ division, as it’s commonly abbreviated, will be where I will be focusing my job efforts after this internship.  I have been working this specific week unsupervised because of unavoidable personal occurrences that left my supervisor with critical accounting left to do. This week’s duties included translating more brochures, researching the fort for any information on latinx or Indigenous persons who passed through the fort to help create reenacted videos that we will display, creating a flyer to engage the surrounding Hispanic community of La Junta, and we had a  5-hour safety training that was educational.  

I can already start to see the road to my future career and am learning volumes about the general path one can take when working for the National Park Service. There are different grade levels that you can be hired at and the grade level I should be at when I graduate at the end of this year is comforting – as I know where I stand. If you have your bachelor’s degree you can start out at GS-5 but depending on your GPA you can apply for GS-7 jobs. This is makes navigating the USAjobs website quicker so that I can reliably focus my efforts on practical job opportunities.