Experience

The best paid internship I had was at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. I interned as a "Young Artist at Work" which meant I had to participate in art activism and attend workshops to rehearse any art I was creating. What made the job enjoyable was being able to work with youth my age and I got paid to attend contemporary art performances. I also learned a lot about what it means to work as a professional artist. The skills I took out of this experience were some very basic soft skills and learning about how to manage art events and gatherings. I learned a very important lesson while interning as well. When I first started the internship we were expected to be taught some filming workshops and participate in discussions with our head director, but what ended up happening was both the filming instructor and our head director got laid off and our dance teacher took on the role of head director. We were all really disappointed about what happened but we continued to show up and work anyway. So the lesson I learned throughout this internship is the show must go on even when plans greatly change. We did suffer from some inadequacies during the internship (due to lack of support) but I would always contribute to the team everyday I had to work. 

Reading Rainbow

Reading for me is sometimes hard to start but easy to finish. I have implemented the strategy of reading on Muni and also reading before I go to bed to make it more enjoyable (if you read before you sleep you will have some pretty cool dreams; this works for me at least). As for annotating, I haven't started writing my thoughts on paper or highlighting sections I find interesting, but I do pay attention to what I'm reading, anything I may be thinking in the moment, and immediately reflect on what I read after so that when I go back to review I can remember what I payed attention to and any ideas I thought up. Mostly just paying attention to anything you found interesting or anything you thought about (relatable or not) helps to wrap your mind around the entirety of your reading. Then, simply reflecting on what you just read is very important when you want to remember it all for later. If I don't understand something while I'm reading, first, I don't panic and I read it again, if I still don't understand the content I will usualy just think about what it means to me and try to make sense of it to the best of my ability. I made sure I was keeping up with the reading by reading a couple of pages a day or even reading a chapter in one sitting. Whenever I'm at home in my bed I can read as much as I'd like but on Muni I can only read around 10 pages per sitting. But if you were to read a 200 page book at 25 pages a day you would be finished in about a week so break up the reading into chunks or chapters and it will be easier to start and finish! Patience is also key!