As one of your friendly Internships Blog writers (along with Tyler and Santi) I thought I would take a blog post to help you get to know me better – while doing my job, of course. Let’s review my summer:

I applied for a handful of internships on MOJO, which you should all do, and was lucky enough to have an employer call me directly to discuss my application and eventually offer me an internship for the summer, which I accepted. However, I live in New York City (the internship capital of the world) and the job was in Denver, Colorado, so what was I thinking?

Frankly, I would never have considered going out to Denver this summer without the program my employer participated in called CLIMB. The main point of CLIMB was to get people like me to spend a summer in Denver. Although I had never been there and did not know anything about the city, I had two key goals for the summer: to get a (preferably paying) internship, and to have an adventure. It was these two objectives that CLIMB fulfilled for me and the other 21 students I lived with, not to mention a host of other perks including free housing, communal student living, free activities and great networking opportunities.

So what is CLIMB, exactly? In its essence, it is a program that brings a group of 20-30 students from Middlebury, Yale and MIT to Denver each year to do PAID internships in and around the city. In addition, the program provides FREE housing in downtown Denver, in which you live (like a king) in suites with your other CLIMBmates, or maybe CLIMBers. To give you a sample of what kinds of internships are available, I did Media Relations for the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, but students worked in everything from finance, to medical research, to outdoor volunteer coordination. Each Wednesday you will attend a dinner and speaker series featuring some Denver’s most interesting and accessible professionals where you will learn and ask questions about everything from local government and education to grad school and professional law. In addition, you will be assigned a mentor from the local alumni community to help you with everything from networking to procuring a bicycle or sleeping bag. Of course, it’s the summer and you’re supposed to have fun, so if there isn’t an organized activity like a hike or rafting trip, you can explore the city’s parks, museums, and nearby mountains.

Intrigued? Come join me at an Info Session for the CLIMB Program from 4:30-5:30 on this Monday, Septermber 27th in Hillcrest 103. Also check them out on Facebook.

See you there, and ask me any questions if you have them.