Post 3: Value: Why is your internship, in particular, important? What value do you add to the organization? What value does it add to you personally beyond gaining experience to list on your resume?

Well, I kind of feel like the first two questions are redundant, or at least overlap to the point that I can answer them both with the same statements. My internship, in particular, is important because I add value to the organization. I add value to the organization by acknowledging that my time is less valuable than CityClub's employees, and by thus being content to spend my time doing whatever needs to be done. I also contribute to CityClub by being a fresh voice able to produce content for  its blog and website.

While the fact that I am most valuable to CityClub because I do whatever needs to be done may sound bad at first, I can assure you that CityClub does not abuse/waste my time/energy by assigning me meaningless tasks like the classic intern duties such as the "coffee run" or  doing filing. The key word in the description that I gave is that I am valuable because I do what needs to be done. My supervisor assigns me a lot of tasks that if I did not do, she would almost certainly have to do herself. For example, we had a list of 200 potential partner organizations from around the state of Washington. We need partners. Somebody had to go through those organizations, do some research on them, and decide which ones were worthy/suitable partners for CityClub. This work is important, engaging, and thought provoking, but any way you slice it, it is also time consuming. My supervisor is the CityClub's Progam and Operations Manager. Every hour that she spends researching these organizations is an hour less that she has to devote to organizing, planning, and running CityClub's organization. Wisely, my supervisor realized that this was a task that I - with my limited experience and skillset - would be able to do, and she passed it off to me. I spent about two whole days chugging through the list of 200 organizations, got some practice researching, and learned a lot. Furthermore, the fact that I did the researching does not mean that my supervisor can't engage with the work. To get up to speed, she reviewed my research, and made corrections where necessary. I am valuable to my organization because I am willing to devote myself to the tasks that my superiors do not have time for.

I am also valuable to CityClub because I can contribute fresh thoughts and words to their website, blog, and social media. I have written a blog post, some tweets and Facebook posts, and some content for their website already. I have a few new things to say, and I think that the way that I recast CityClub's message along my own slant makes it just a little bit fresher.