The lit review has been fine as it is within my capabilities and it is a big enough undertaking that I never truly have nothing to do. On the flip side, I would like to be involved with more meetings and tasks that involve other people or collaboration. Sitting in a cubicle for nearly 7 hours straight isn't exciting even if the work is interesting.
I had taken it upon myself to add bicycle route data for Bend into Google Map Maker since there was very little of it before and because it was something I could churn out in a few hours. I was making changes route by route based upon a transportation plan from 2006. I actually was nearly done with it before Brian decided to check with Colleen in the GIS department. She did a little research and found out what Google is looking for so that she could just upload the official data directly to them to ensure accuracy. This of course would have been the way to do it initially, but I could not find where to upload ESRI shapefiles. My pawprints will not be on the final data that Google Maps incorporates into its bicycle route and trails layers but at least I can say that I was a contributing factor in spurring it on. Brian noted that this ball wouldn't be rolling if I hadn't brought it to light and he joked that I delegated this task up to Colleen. I had enjoyed working in Google Map Maker and am just a little disappointed that it's not ultimately me dealing with Google. When it comes time for me to denote my experience on my resume, I think I can fairly say that I assisted or contributed to this effort.
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I know that a significant portion or even an outright majority of what a person learns in an internship is beyond technical skills or makes for good bullets on a resume. I am trying where possible to learn life lessons, career lessons and glean what I can from the knowledge of the people around me. Thanks to all of the layoffs everybody left in Long Range Planning has been in the business for quite some time and has a wealth of wisdom. I got to talking to Damian, who isn't quite as easy to talk to as Brian due to the way he likes to joke around, and he let me know that he's never been bored in his current job or his previous job with Deschutes County. He's been with the City of Bend for 7 years and was with Deschutes County for 10, so that bodes well for me having a career in work that stays interesting. His career also seems to mimic what I have seen from others: his first few years after school he worked in a few different positions and then after that he entered a long period of stability. I hope that my career can resemble something like that.
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The deadline for a Transportation Planner Internship with the Port of Portland is on August 5. They didn't state anywhere that a cover letter or resume was required but I decided to do both of them just in case. This is a paid position, so I assume that the procedure for hiring would be quite similar to hiring a full time employee. Updating my resume to reflect my short time here in Bend was quick; tweaking my cover letter has not been so quick. I don't normally consider myself an overly wordy person so it comes as a bit of a surprise that my cover letter is on the long side and it needs to be pared down. I have an extremely strong genuine interest both in this internship and with getting my foot in the door with the Port of Portland and I hope that that comes through in the cover letter. It's not just that I want an internship badly; I want this internship.
After my stumbles with Washington County and especially with Metro earlier this summer my expectations have been tempered with respect to my viability for positions. Regardless of what happens here, there will still be plenty of reasonable opportunities for me in the next few months that would be a good usage of my remaining time in graduate school.
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