The summer has gone by so fast, but I’ve learned so much throughout this season! I’m now in my last weeks of my Oregon State University Extension Service Small Farms Program internship, and what a great experience it has been. I’ve been able to help with a wide array of projects, ranging from public outreach via social media to data collection in agricultural trials.

The biggest project that I’ve worked on was my activity for the Polk County Fair. I had to figure out how to make an activity that was engaging for kids and related to agriculture. I settled on making my activity about beneficial arthropods (insects, spiders, etc.), since that was something that I would have been interested in when I was young. I designed trivia cards for kids to read and set up an area for them to draw. This turned out to be an effective outreach strategy as parents would have to wait for their kids to do the activity and ended up taking some of our outreach materials. While I definitely learned a lot about how to perform effective outreach from this project, I ended up learning a lot more about insect anatomy than I ever thought I would.

One of my favorite things that I’ve gotten to help with is the Olea project. I’ve had the opportunity to go to North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora and collect data on OSU’s 400-plus olive trees , assessing fruit set and collecting leaves for tissue samples. In the process, I’ve been able to meet many interesting people, including donors and active researchers. NWREC is also just a beautiful place to be on a sunny summer day!

Over the course of my internship, I’ve come to have a greater appreciation for everything that goes into public outreach. Everything from social media posts and email campaigns to manning and preparing a fair booth takes so much time and effort that isn’t usually seen from an outside perspective. Many of these things take hours to prepare and design, but people engaging with them may only see them for a few seconds at a time. Even so, the unseen work that goes into outreach is worth it, because we are able to bring OSU Extension’s amazing services to people in need of advice and assistance.

I’m very grateful for all that I’ve learned over the summer. I learned how to confidently communicate and bond with people in a professional environment, which are skills that I wanted to work on going into my internship. I’ve also learned a lot of practical information and skills, from noxious weed identification to the use of website building programs. I’ve learned things that I never expected to. Even though I might not use all of them in my future career, I feel like a much more well-rounded person because of these learning experiences with OSU Extension.

Finally, I’d like to thank my supervisor Hayley White for making my internship such a positive experience. Her guidance and compassion helped me stay on course throughout the internship, and she always affirmed the value of the work I did. I couldn’t have asked for a better boss at my first job!

– Kieran King