A Day in the Life with Me as a CAL Intern

July 7, 2020 - A Day In the Life as a CAL Intern

It's my second week working as a Community Artists as Leaders Intern at Artists Working In Education and my experience is very different this year. 

Last year I worked as an Artist In Residence Intern and I had no idea that I'd be doing everything virtually a year ago. Overall it's been a nice experience. I work less hours this year but it still takes a lot of work. I have to work on projects for both Rising Artists Council and my job, but it's fun because all of it involves collaboration and feedback.

The only challenges I've had so far is making sure I organize all of my emails and things that are shared with me (more of a personal thing) and connection issues when meeting over Google Meet. Another challenge was just adjusting to how everything was virtual. It's different meeting with people over Google Meet, especially since I worked hands on making art projects with kids every day last year. I'm glad my job isn't entirely virtual, but it still takes adjusting.

So far I've sketched out a design for a pathway mural project we're working on (I'm typing this on July 8th: Today everyone met up at the AWE office and we all sketched out more designs for the pathway and talked about what designs would look best). I'm also working on two projects for Rising Artists Council (runs on Mondays from 5-6 PM).

A Day At Work ^^^ 

I usually have my alarm set for either 9 or 9:30. Today my alarm went off at 9 but I slept in an extra hour. One of the things I like about doing everything virtually is that I don't have to get out of my pajamas right away to go somewhere. I like being able to work from home at times.

I ate breakfast by 10:50 (today I made pancakes). I don't wake up hungry but when I do I usually want something sweet. 

By 11:40 I changed into a comfortable outfit for my meeting. I don't go all out with my outfits, but I still make sure I look decent.

sketching out designs on sketchbook

I don't have a certain place I work from in my house, but I prefer my basement. If I'm not working from there I'll work from my room and find a comfortable place to sit at the foot of my bed. My setup includes a mouse and mouse pad, Wacom tablet for sketching ideas, small sketchbook, small pad of paper, and pencil pouch. I usually play lofi beats on Spotify on the tv as background/work music.

At 12 I met with John, Abi, Audrey, Roland and Demonte on Google Meet to sketch and brainstorm designs for a future pathway mural project. So far we meet virtually on Tuesdays and Thursdays and in-person on Wednesdays (wearing masks and socially-distancing).

Our meets go from 12-3 PM, but today we ended early at 2 as we were done with designing. I closed out the day by using the extra hour to work on one of my RAC projects.

Permission was granted by those featured in this blog to use these pictures

cred: me