On Wednesday, Sept. 11,  Waynesburg University student, Michael McCready gave a presentation in Buhl Hall for his internship at Bushy Run Battlefield. The students here at Waynesburg are either encouraged or required to incorporate opportunities such as this into their schooling.  A substantial percentage of the academic programs expect students to acquire an internship or some type of on-the-job experience prior to graduation. 

Taking an inside look into McCready’s experience can show other students how one goes about obtaining an internship and what one could look like.  McCready, who is a sophomore baseball player for Waynesburg University, got connected with Rea Redd, the director of the Paul R. Stewart Museum and director of the Eberly Library on campus, prior to this year.  McCready has been an admirer of history all his life and pictures his future as a museum director. He sought out Redd for advice and was told that if he wanted to work and help with the campus museum, he should get experience working in one,   which he did over the summer. McCready found an ad for the aforementioned Bushy Run Battlefield internship on Facebook and realized that Bushy Run State Park was only 10 minutes from his house. McCready went on to apply and ended up getting the position as an intern at the Bushy Run Battlefield State Park Museum in Jeannette, PA.

The type of work that McCready did during his internship tended to change from day to day. He helped with the park website and posted blogs weekly, which took McCready a lot of time to research over the summer. 

“So I would have to do weekly blogs where I would write about  1,000 words per blog, about a week’s worth of research for that task to be able to really understand it, and I would have to gather a bunch of different sources and put the information out there in a way that would engage the people who were going to look at it,” McCready said. He also helped make some educational videos for the museum that either went to Facebook, YouTube or the park’s website. No matter which task he had, McCready found a way to be helpful to the goals of the museum and the manager, Matt. 

McCready ended up working  a total of 280 hours, which resulted in, “a lot of experience in the future job that I would have, and with that, I was really able to understand what happened on a day-to-day basis of the place of work I was at.” 

Opportunities like this allow students to figure out what their future work life could look like after school. After some time, it can help confirm or deny one’s interests in their vocation, as McCready says, “It just really let me decide if I wanted to go into this career or if I wanted to change careers, and it did. It confirmed that I wanted to.” 

When asked what his favorite part of the experience was, McCready said, “My favorite part was probably the  connections that I was able to get from it,” McCready said. “The museum was a pretty well known Museum. I was able to go to a bunch of different locations, and I was able to connect with the different museum managers or different people of importance.” 

Students should take advantage of the time while in school to get as much real-world experience as possible, as McCready said, “If you want to have an internship, reach out to your advisor and they’ll help you along the way. No matter what the situation is, you’ll always be able to learn something from it.”