NAILED IT

Today being the second-to-last day of the 2013 summer internship (wait, how did that happen?!), we did our final presentations dry run. This year we did them in the morning (whereas we used to do them in the afternoon), which allowed time for any changes to be made based on any feedback. However, as it turns out, not many interns have much work to have to do, because a lot of them aced their dry run! (Or at least came really close.) There were no crashes-and-burns or meltdowns like last year - in fact it was quite the opposite. And not only was I impressed by the quality of the presentations, but the interns also were very involved in each other's presentations and gave lots of valuable feedback. Wow. I can tell from today that we are in really good shape for tomorrow, which I don't think is a total comfort I have enjoyed before (and definitely not last year). I can rest easy tonight!

I think a lot of this success and time management can be attributed to the milestones we established this summer. By having due dates and group critiques of titles, abstracts, and presentation outlines, the interns were given more feedback than in the past, not to mention the looming final presentations were kept on the front burner. I know that last year I struggled with how to develop this concept so as to not hold the interns' hands, but I think that we miraculously managed to strike an appropriate balance on our first try. Yeah! We'll definitely want to continue this format next year, based on how well it has worked.

Meanwhile, this year I put a little extra work into the presentation programs. Instead of a single handout that only lists presentation titles, presenters, their labs, and their schools, I put together a whole booklet that also contains the project abstracts (in addition to all that other information), as well as some information on the intern program itself.

I thought this might serve multiple purposes: it provides extra information on the presentations; it is somewhat of a promotion piece for CIS; and it could kind of be a keepsake for the interns and their parents (I know it sounds lame, but that is totally the kind of thing I would have kept when I was an intern). You can view the whole thing online here.

Well, wish us luck tomorrow - though, I don't think we actually need it this time!