Sometimes students find internships at precisely the right place and precisely the right moment that allow the experience to exceed even their greatest expectations.
"I'm realizing that the work I'm doing is work I want to be doing for the foreseeable future. I want to be somebody who is shedding light on important issues and trying to help people."
Q: How would you describe the benefits of this experience?
A: This internship has just been really formative for me. It's really given me a lot of space to work and serve on a smaller, more concentrated level. After two years of being on campus at Puget Sound, it's refreshing to be off campus. It's great to be surrounded by black people, to be doing black business, black work. To be working and seeing black people all the time here is something that has been really empowering for me.
Q: Given all those positives, has this internship had any effect on what you might pursue after graduation?
A: Yeah, for sure. I was actually thinking yesterday about maybe applying to the Seattle Urban League after I graduate. I'm realizing that the work that I'm doing here is, if not the work I want to do for the rest of my life, definitely work that I want to be doing for the foreseeable future. Whether that means ending up at a black-owned newspaper or something like that, or working in a nonprofit space like this, I want to be somebody who is shedding light on important issues and trying to help people.
Isaac’s internship at the Tacoma Urban League marks the culmination of his participation in Puget Sound’s Reflective Immersive Sophomore Experience (RISE) program. The RISE program allows sophomores to connect their liberal arts education to off-campus, career environments.
