Week 8: Tuesday and Thursday Nights

When I first heard of the weekly seminars, I turned my nose up just a little. I thought, “Why do we need these seminars anyway?” “What could we be possibly talking about?” Then, when I heard there were two seminars during the week, both with included evening times, I really turned my nose up. At first I believed that I had things to do in the middle of my evenings, however, now I know that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else during those evenings. Just looking back, I am ashamed to a degree about how my attitude was.

However, the DCBRP Seminars are wonderful! It is especially wonderful for me because since I am a commuter, these two days out of the week are the days where I get to hang out with the fellow interns. Because I do not live in the apartments with them, the weekly seminars make it that much more special to me. I really like how on Tuesdays we get an informational, professional feel with some of the community partners speaking to us. On Thursdays, I love the flexibility of the program and how we are creative enough to have so much fun when we are together. I never knew everyone was so creative with how our Thursday seminars go.

On Tuesday, my favorite sessions  was the one where all the interns used the ipad to do budgeting as a non-profit organization. This seminar means a lot to me in particular because not only do I want to participate in public health, I want to create a non-profit organization as well. it was extremely interesting to see how different everyone’s opinion is and how challenging it would be in the real world to negotiate with other people. It really opened my eyes to how crucial it is to plan and to work out the specifics in order to fund something huge. This also ties in with the grant writing workshop that I attended. I know just off of these two seminars alone that I have so much work and practice to do and so much to learn to ensure that my endeavors are successful in the future. I am in the best place to start learning now, and for that, I am extremely grateful to the program.

On Thursday, one of my favorite seminars was the series of games hosted by Drew, Damaris, and Ashley. One of the main reasons is because I won the game of musical chairs, (which I have never won a day in my life). I was such an accomplishment for me! Also, I enjoyed the game show and how much I learned about my city. I was a little embarrassed that I did not know the month and year Detroit was “born”, but I’m glad I got the chance to learn it anyway! I’m sad knowing that we don’t have that much time left, but I hope that at UofM we can still hang out, which I’m sure we will!