Intern Final Presentations 2013

Well, today marks another successful conclusion for the CIS Summer Internship program. This is now my 4th intern-last-day as RIT staff, and each year it seems history repeats itself: interns get here to much excitement, things level off for a while there in the middle, and then everything ramps up to culminate in this big final presentation day - after which everything is suddenly over and everyone leaves, still full of adrenaline plus the added shock and disbelief that it's all over. One thing that will change this year, though: next week, despite the absence of 14 high schoolers running around, my quiet cool down is no more, thanks to RIT's new semester system!!! Boooo. So I'm still hopped up on adrenaline at the moment, and things are unlikely to change what with classes starting so suddenly on Monday. But anyways, this post is supposed to be about the interns' swan song!

I know that every year I say our group of interns tops the last, but I can honestly say that this year, we had by far the best overall group of presentations I have ever witnessed. (I suppose yesterday's dry run was a good indication that this would be the case.) What can I say about the whole thing - the presentations were great, everything went smoothly (even the break that Joe very adamantly told me to take out, but I didn't - and I'm glad I didn't), no one was disruptive, and we even ended a little bit early which allowed the interns some time to show their families around. The only flub was that I forgot to introduce myself at the beginning (what a typical Bethany thing to do), and I suppose there was some slight unrest at the very start when the projector resolution and the video recording did not want to play nice. Which reminds me - we recorded the presentations this year! You can get to them via the interns website, and then you'll understand why I'm so proud of our interns. (You can also get pictures of the presentations here.)

We provided lunch again like last year, as a last little celebration for the group. It was funny, a few of us went to all the effort to rearrange the furniture in the Fishbowl into clusters of tables, which the interns just took all apart so they could make one big table for them all to sit at. It was nice to see that they had all formed such a tight bond, which was also apparent with all the hugs and loud "GOODBYE!"s that accompanied each departure. I made sure to get a quick final group picture with everyone:

Yes, even including Robert - who let us take his picture, for once!

As usual, now that it's all over, it's hard to say goodbye. I'll miss you, 2013 interns! Best of luck to you all.