GIS Internship
I am now in my final class for the GIS certificate program at the University of West Florida, where I will be doing a supervised internship with a Florida state agency. The majority of the credit will be from 160 hours of internship work hours, and roughly 1/3 of the final grade comes from classroom assignments preparing us for a GIS career, such as assembling a portfolio, creating a GIS-forward resume, creating or updating a LinkedIn profile, and reviewing job interview skills.
I had some initial difficulty securing an internship. I had an internship approved and designed with my former employer, and had already had several meetings with managers and staff, but I had a job opportunity that I left for before it officially began. Fortunately, my internship advisor had a contact that became my current placement. My placement was difficult, because if I couldn't do it with a current employer, I needed to work remotely, because I already work full time and have children. Fortunately, this position was available remotely.
My first projects will involve creating a StoryMap for an agency project, working with Survey123, and coding a lot of data from reports into tabular data, which I hope to be able to automate. I've been experiencing difficulty getting all my access established, so I have been doing ESRI classes for training on the skills I anticipate using for these projects, so that I don't fall behind on hours.
One of the first things we have done in this class was to join a professional GIS group, and I chose to join the local Seven Hills Regional GIS Users Group (SHRUG). They are a local group of GIS users who coordinate about local GIS needs, facilitate networking, post jobs, and put on a yearly workshop and seminar. I also like this group because they're largely responsible for getting me in to GIS, after I had the opportunity to attend one of their yearly workshops when my work unit went.
I had some initial difficulty securing an internship. I had an internship approved and designed with my former employer, and had already had several meetings with managers and staff, but I had a job opportunity that I left for before it officially began. Fortunately, my internship advisor had a contact that became my current placement. My placement was difficult, because if I couldn't do it with a current employer, I needed to work remotely, because I already work full time and have children. Fortunately, this position was available remotely.
My first projects will involve creating a StoryMap for an agency project, working with Survey123, and coding a lot of data from reports into tabular data, which I hope to be able to automate. I've been experiencing difficulty getting all my access established, so I have been doing ESRI classes for training on the skills I anticipate using for these projects, so that I don't fall behind on hours.
One of the first things we have done in this class was to join a professional GIS group, and I chose to join the local Seven Hills Regional GIS Users Group (SHRUG). They are a local group of GIS users who coordinate about local GIS needs, facilitate networking, post jobs, and put on a yearly workshop and seminar. I also like this group because they're largely responsible for getting me in to GIS, after I had the opportunity to attend one of their yearly workshops when my work unit went.
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