Bicentennial Exhibit Development Internship Week 7

Hello! Here is this week’s update on my internship with the Bicentennial Exhibit Development project:

First, I wish to discuss my experience in the role of "team lead" for the undergraduate interns, and my process of learning how to be in this role: 

I am so grateful to have been given an opportunity to be a team lead for the interns, but it has not come without a learning curve! Before this internship, I had never really been put in a position (officially, at least) where I am "in charge" of other people. Usually in my academic life, I tend to take on this type of role naturally in group settings because of my passion for learning and my want to do things the best I can. This means that in group projects, I tend to take on a "project manager" type of role, which has always been great for me. This internship has allowed me to really learn and experience this in a new way, which has been amazing. 

The times I struggle in this internship, and specifically in this position, is where my professional experience with what we are doing (creating an exhibit) lacks. Sometimes I feel as though my lack of knowledge on how to create something like a gallery exhibit hinders us from moving forward in this internship, because it feels as though I am creating things for us interns to be doing without the guidance of how to do that thing. This, I suppose, is because I am used to being given a task from someone above me, and then I simply execute that work, however this internship seems to function in a different way, which is something I have had to adjust to. I often bring this up to the graduate project supervisor, because I feel a little lost on the exhibit's overall progression. We have worked to solve these problems by talking about the exhibit as a team, and this usual helps us get back on the same page, but overall I feel as though the interns (including myself) are struggling to understand how to do this work without the formal knowledge or training on a project like this. I want to be a great team lead, (and I think so far I am doing a good job, hopefully) so this is something that weighs on my mind throughout this internship. This, and also the fact that mid-term evaluations are approaching quickly which means I will receive bulk feedback on my position so far, tends to be my current thought process. 

However, I feel like this week provided a great "next-step" feeling in our progression, which I will talk about now! 

These week we had two meetings which allowed us to make progress on the development of the exhibit. First, I had a 1-on-1 meeting with the graduate project supervisor to discuss the progress of the exhibit and to discuss things like the mid-term evaluations. We went over the object list and themes that the interns created last week, and we had to change a few things to reflect a more "simple" approach to the exhibit, which will allow us to execute it much easier, and overall, better. Next, we had a whole team meeting to discuss these changes, and to provide the next steps. The next phase is to create the narrative text, floor plan, and labels for the exhibit, which is all due within the next month or so. I created files to allow us all the work together on these steps, and I shared them with everyone. This will be the first major (outside of choosing the objects) step to deliver the exhibit at the end of the semester. I also had the chance to go to the gallery space that the exhibit will be displayed in, and I took photos of the space to use as examples during this next phase of development. I uploaded everything into Teams for us to view whenever we need some guidance, or simply a reminder of what the space will look like while we construct the floor plan. Since we are basically half way through the semester, it is really time to move on this work, and I look forward to everything we do! 

See you next week!