Museum: Listen to Lexi (2020) talk about her internship at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC last summer.

Transcript: Stephanie: You're listening to gear up the Duke Career Centers student produced podcasts showcasing real student summer internship experiences. My name is Stephanie Mayle and today we're talking Lexi, who worked at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C. this summer.

Lexi: My name's Lexi. I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm a senior and a history major with minors in psychology and Spanish. And this summer, I interned at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C..

Stephanie: And how did you find out about that job?

Lexi: Mostly from looking online. The previous summer, I did Story Plus and I worked with the university archivist and I thought I wanted to do something similar again. So I did some online searches and found some internships at the National Archives; that sort of matched what I wanted to do and went forward from there.

Stephanie: And so what exactly were you doing day to day for the work?

Lexi: So I worked in two departments, the Education and Public Programs Department and then the exhibitions or exhibits department. So for Education, it was a lot of interacting with the public. Most of the day I was on my feet working in the museum. We had a learning center that I staffed. So I got to meet a lot of people from all over the world, not just all over the country. So that was a lot of fun. And in the Education Department, most of what we focused on was civics education. So what is the constitution actually about? How do the three branches of government work together, that kind of thing for the exhibits department, what I was responsible for there was primarily research and writing. I worked with a curator on an upcoming exhibition for 2020 and I did background research for her. And then I also helped write object labels that will appear in the museum to go next to objects and photos.

Stephanie: So what made you interested in doing this kind of work? Like, is it something that you've always been interested in?

Lexi: Yeah. So I would say one of my bucket list items in life was to work at a museum. So, you know, check. I did that. So when I did story plus after my sophomore year, the product that I worked on was the Allen Building Take Over 50 exhibit and that was small scale. But I really enjoyed the work of doing research and then creating an exhibit from the research as opposed to writing a paper. I wanted to do that again. And I actually applied to the exhibits department, but then was told I was actually going to be in both departments. But I ended up enjoying the mix of the two.

Stephanie: Yeah, well, that's a good transition. My next question of what did you like about the experience?

Lexi: Okay, so I am like an introvert and extrovert. I like having people time and quiet time. So I did three days a week in education and two days a week in exhibits. And so, there was some overlap, and if I had downtime in education, I'd do exhibits research, but I enjoyed like half the week being on my feet and the other half the week sort of being at my desk or being in the research room. And that was very nice to not have to do either of those all the time. Mm hmm. Yeah, that was nice.

Stephanie: Mm hmm. Yeah, that is nice. Was there anything that you didn't like as much or you kind of weren't expecting going in?

Lexi: So this was the first summer that they did an internship in-between, that was shared between two departments and it was me and then just one other intern. And so although we had these sort of designated, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we'll be in education Tuesday, Thursday in exhibits, oftentimes it was sort of a fluid schedule. And I had two bosses and there wasn't always communication between the two bosses. So that was kind of hard. I found myself sort of being the go between for the departments, but then at the s