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Students turn summer into job training
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photos by BRIAN WILLHIDE
Lora Miller of St. Charles helps stretch Barbara Nicholson of St. Leonard at Prince Frederick Calvert Physical Therapy. Miller is an intern at the facility and attends Shenandoah University in Virginia.
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Rachel Griner, 20, of Huntingtown will be a senior at Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Va., this coming fall. She is an environmental science major and is spending her second summer as a paid, full-time intern with the Calvert Marine Museum’s estuary in Solomons. Griner will continue this internship until mid-August when she returns to Bridgewater. She describes it as ‘‘a summer job for good experience.”
The museum’s estuary features a number of inhabitants from all over the Patuxent River including fish, invertebrates and mammals. All of this aquatic life is directly linked with the Chesapeake Bay.
‘‘It’s very interesting to see what goes on with the Chesapeake Bay, especially since this is where I’ve lived all my life,” Griner said. She added, ‘‘It’s great to work with the live animals, too.”
Griner was surfing the Internet when she came across this particular opportunity with the marine museum and jumped at the chance, she said.
Her normal routine consists of helping the aquarists with their daily activities in the estuary, but also includes the preparation of the estuary’s exhibits and feeding its animals.
‘‘We’re working on putting in new exhibits with fossils and such, so it’s really cool to see those,” Griner said.
In addition to her work this summer, Griner has already made plans to be an intern with the Department of Environmental Quality in Virginia. She hopes to attend graduate school once she finishes up at Bridgewater, but said, ‘‘I’m probably going to take a year off.”
Lora Miller, 23, is a St. Charles resident who is starting her third year of physical therapy school at Shenandoah University in the coming fall. She is currently an unpaid, full-time intern with the Prince Frederick branch of Calvert Physical Therapy. Her internship is part of an eight-week requirement of physical therapy school that she must fulfill before she graduates.
‘‘I chose this particular place because it was the closest to my home in the area, which became a way to save money for me,” Miller said. ‘‘But I’m also very people-oriented and I enjoy interacting with others and making people feel better. It’s something I’m very passionate about.”
Miller said the work does have its ups and downs but finds it rewarding to work with people, especially the elderly.
‘‘Here, we do a lot of balance training, body strengthening and try to improve our patients’ range of motion, especially at the joints,” she said.
Beyond her work at Calvert Physical Therapy, Miller hopes to specialize in neurology when she gets out of school.
‘‘I’d like to work with spinal cord and brain injuries, multiple sclerosis, strokes and such,” she said. However, she did mention, ‘‘that could always change.”
Kimmie Muller sought out her own internship for nothing more than an opportunity to gain experience. Muller, a 17-year-old graduate of Huntingtown High School this month, works as a part-time, unpaid intern with 98.3 STAR FM. The radio station, based in Mechanicsville, reaches out to all of Southern Maryland in addition to Washington, D.C.
‘‘I wake up at about 4 a.m. every morning to get ready and make the 30-mile drive down to Mechanicsville,” Muller said. ‘‘My first task is to record the traffic that gets used in the traffic reports.”
After that, she is a contributor to the station’s T-Bone and Heather Morning Show. The morning broadcast runs from 6 to 10 a.m., at which point Muller says her work day is only half done.
She also works part-time as a hostess at Mango’s Bar and Grill in Rose Haven.
‘‘The station also pays me to cover their live events on the weekends, so that’s pretty cool. I enjoy doing that,” she said.
For her unpaid work, Muller said, ‘‘The best part of it is that people actually know who I am since they hear me on the radio.”
Muller will be attending High Point University in High Point, N.C., in the coming fall, where she will be studying broadcasting.
Jay Adams, 21, is a Northern High School graduate and is entering his senior year at University of Maryland in College Park. For this summer, he is working a paid, full-time internship with the law offices of Cumberland and Erly in Prince Frederick.
‘‘My grandfather knew Laurence Cumberland, so I kind of had an in already with that,” Adams said. ‘‘I was looking for something local so I pretty much just started applying to local law offices.”
Adams aspires to attend law school once he graduates from the University of Maryland, College Park with his degree in criminal justice.
‘‘I love Calvert County, but [Washington] D.C. has some great opportunities, too, so we’ll see,” Adams said.
His daily routine might not appear too exciting, with him describing it as ‘‘filing papers, re-typing documents and doing a lot of research on different laws and cases.” However, Adams said, ‘‘I really enjoy all of it.”
‘‘The most interesting part of this job is going to court and watching the trial, or just simply watching someone get their sentence adjusted. The experience itself, though, is just so great,” Adams said.
When asked if he could see himself making a career out of what his bosses, Laurence Cumberland and John Erly, do for a living, Adams said, ‘‘Definitely.”
