A series of unfortunate events
I haven't posted in a long time... That is mostly due to the fact that I have not really felt like sitting and typing out my feelings. This blog is a mixture of what I think, what I feel, and what I have learned. This summer I took up an internship with the Student Conservation Association - the SCA. I am a fire education corps member, though I like to call it an internship but it isn't quite that. It's a little bit different because most of the expenses are paid. I make 160 a week, a measly stipend, but it does the job. I am not here for the money, I am here because I received an email from my advisor/professor on a listserv that stated this was a great opportunity. I am here because I thought I would be doing a great thing for other people. I am here because I believed in what I read the SCA was all about. I am here because my vision was clouded by lies from my project leader, and I am not happy at all about having put that much trust into someone's words. I am trully ashamed of his leadership especially after all of the things he talked himself up about- his leadership, the program, the accomodations, his goals, and our responsibilities. None of these has held up, not one bit of it, to the words he accounted to them... I would be a better leader. Anyone here could be a better leader because we actually want to leave the North Carolina Forest Service, and the SCA with a good name, but here is here because he feels like he is doing charity, and he thus puts little substance to his promises, to his responsibilities, to all of his bullshit, which he has proclaimed himself a master bullshitter. I know it is true as well, because I have caught him in a lie more then once. I am so fed up, I can't wait until I am out of this house, and never have to see him again. There is only so much I can do as a corps member, and I am not here to help anyone look good. When our Project Manager comes, I will let her know exactly how I feel, and what can be done to make things better. There are soo many suggestions, and things that could be changed, I am confident that I could fix a lot of these complications. This summer's internship was truly for me, after the training in Idaho, a series of unfortunate events.
I had high hopes but as soon as I met Jerry, the very moment I met him, i had a bad taste in my mouth, and I knew it was downhill from there. We are a fire education team, so not only do we help in creating CWPP's , we also should look for opportunities to inform the public, but have we done that?? NO. We are just doing housing assessments like there is no tomorrow. All day, all 8 hours in a car, we just assess houses. Then on the weekends, Jer-bear takes the SCA vehicle, using SCA gas, to go back to Pigeon Forge to take care of his business. He doodled during Access/Arc Map training, and doodled about our agency contact being run over by a firetruck! I can't believe that. He retells the same damn stories over and over again. I think if he ever was a great leader, he has lost all remnants of that leadership. You know what, I need to save this for Jill, so I will leave my rant and talk about the good things.
Good things about this internship:
Hiking
Mountains
Beautiful trips to the Great Smoky Mountains, and the Pisgah National Forest
Wolf Lake
Tourist Towns
Hanging out at Patrick's place
The sylva team
I think that's about it. In the beginning of the summer, I had so many ambitions and things I wanted to do buy my roommates were like: we have ALL summer to do things. Yet I was ready to go NOW. Update: we are two weeks away from being done and they are scrambling to do all these things that they never got done because they wasted their weekends away... Poor them :P
Next time I do an SCA thing, if I do... I will have my own car. WILL
