Internally Learning

Week 2 of my intership at St. Jude came and went in a hurry! I went through volunteer orientation because I will actually be filling a shift as part of my job. I am excited about this opportunity because I will gain two different perspectives on the volunteering experience. As an intern, one of my resonsibilites is to do volunteer spotlights. I started one of these spotlights this week. They include scheduling a photo shoot with the volunteer and St. Jude's Biomedical Communications team, doing an interview, writing an article, and combining it all into a piece to submit to the website and newsletter.

 I also sat in on several more meetings. Some were more interesting than others but they were all informative and helped me understand all the pieces to the St. Jude puzzle. This week I learned about the process for visitors do do special events, the developing career of volunteer management and how much it costs the institution to bring on volunteers. I had never considered that someone's donation of time would actually cost money for St. Jude, but it most certainly does. Another fact about St. Jude is that it costs $1.7 million to operate every day! That in itself is impressive, but what's more impressive is that a large majority of it is made of individual donations of $30 a month. Danny Thomas would be proud!

Speaking of Danny Thomas, last week would have been his 100th birthday with 50th anniversary of the opening of St. Jude coming up in February. It is definitely an exciting time to be involved with the hospital!

Early in the week we had a luncheon to honor one of the volunteers who has been serving St. Jude for 27 years! Although I did not know her very well, or many of the people that attended, it was fun to share in celebrating her impact. (As well as eat leftovers at lunch for the next 3 days.)

I attended another dinner at MGHouse, which led to my favorite part of the week. I had done crafts with some of the kids and then saw the same kids at the hospital the next morning. It was neat to be able to greet them by name and interact with them after meeting them the night before.

I love my job and have had a great first 2 weeks, but I am definitely excited about having Monday off!