(2021) Biggest Takeaway by Stephen Hunter

 By: Stephen Hunter (Artists Working in Education)

Biggest Takeaway

What was my biggest fear/challenge coming into this internship, and how did I overcome it? To be completely honest, the biggest challenge I faced was getting the energy to go to work whenever I was required. It wasn't really because the things we were doing were hard, but more because of everything that happened this year. I really just wanted to take this summer to rest. My biggest fear was actually that because I haven't been practicing my art and even people skills, that I would be bad at it and want to quit. But I realized that it was like riding a bike, and when I tried, I didn’t really lose any of my skills. Now because I chose to enter this internship, not only did I acquire new skills for work, I'm also now able to work on my rusty and honestly bad people skills for when my senior year starts. But the way I was able to overcome it was actually, for lack of better words, forcing myself and letting others force me into their conversations. I'm more or less used to just listening to what others have to say, but for this, future jobs and maybe even college, I’ve chosen to try to overcome the obstacles and walls that I laid out for myself.

Since I've already talked about my people skills “or lack of”, I guess one of my improvements would probably be my work ethic. Because of the predicament the WORLD is in right now, having nothing to do throughout the year besides online school, I’ve started to lack the drive to do anything.This includes all the things I used to like to do like art, reading, writing and just playing video games. So when I saw the opportunity to do something fun and challenging, while also getting paid of course, I decided to force myself to try and see If I could get through it. And now that I know that this is technically year-round, I'm probably gonna go for a bit longer. Artistically, to be completely honest, I don't feel like I’ve changed all that much. No real reason for that, just feel like I've been this way for some years now.