{"id":2994,"date":"2015-06-02T09:24:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T13:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/?p=2994"},"modified":"2015-07-30T12:09:02","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T16:09:02","slug":"reflections-on-culture-and-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/reflections-on-culture-and-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Culture and Connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internships can be hit or miss.\u00a0 Once, in college, I had an internship where my supervisor gave me one thing to do about every week or two that took me just a few hours, so I spent most of my time reading environmental psychology journal articles instead.\u00a0 Luckily, I can tell that my internship at Rocky Mountain Institute, which I started last Tuesday, will definitely be the opposite of that!<\/p>\n

Rocky Mountain Institute<\/a> (RMI) is an energy-focused \u201cthink-and-do tank\u201d, headquartered in Snowmass, Colorado, with offices also in Boulder, Colorado, New York City, and Washington, D.C.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be working on their buildings team this summer.\u00a0 My interest in buildings stems from the fact that they consume 40% of energy; through retrofits and sustainable design of new buildings, there are huge opportunities for energy savings.\u00a0 This summer I\u2019ll be working on writing up case studies on buildings that have undergone deep retrofits, to be used to further demonstrate the advantageousness of retrofits.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo credit: April Christensen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After just one week of work so far, I\u2019m really excited about the culture of RMI.\u00a0 One of my tasks this week was to read a 90-page document written by the founder of RMI, Amory Lovins, about the story of the organization, its history, and its goals.\u00a0 RMI was founded on a vision of improving the way society consumes and manages natural resources, a mission that reflects my own personal career goals.\u00a0 This reading, other RMI articles, and my interactions with the other staff this week, have shown me that RMI is a place that counts on creativity and vision to move forward and achieve its mission.\u00a0 Not only is this an amazing type of culture to work in, but I believe it\u2019s the only way we can implement solutions for the environmental issues we face; we can\u2019t fix them with current technologies and methods, we need invention and innovation.\u00a0 I am hoping that because RMI values independence and creativity, I\u2019ll be able to find a way to do some behavioral energy efficiency work this summer, because that\u2019s one of my greatest interests!<\/p>\n

Both RMI and the Nicholas School played a part in giving me what I can tell will be an amazing summer internship; the Nicholas School in connecting me to this opportunity and organization in the first place, and RMI for being such a great organization.\u00a0 This is a reminder of what I think is one of the greatest benefits of getting a master\u2019s degree from the Nic School: connections.\u00a0 Though the environmental field is growing, the Nicholas School network spreads amazingly far and wide within it.\u00a0 I got this internship through the Stanback program, which is funded by a Duke alum and sponsors students to work at environmental nonprofits.\u00a0 Even if I took away nothing from the Nicholas School but the connections, that would be plenty!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll close my first blog post by saying that current events this week have reminded me why I study energy efficiency and climate change.\u00a0 Texas has received 35 trillion gallons of rain<\/a> over the past month, with most of it concentrated in the last week or two.\u00a0 This rain, which has caused dangerous, deadly flooding, is a result of increasing severe weather events<\/a> that accompany climate change.\u00a0 Having gone to college in Texas, with friends and my boyfriend still living down there, I am reminded why I fight this fight.\u00a0 Climate change is serious and I am excited to take on this issue alongside RMI this summer!<\/p>\n

\"Exploring<\/a>
Exploring Boulder with (left to right) my brother Dan (who lives in town), boyfriend Erik, and me!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Internships can be hit or miss.\u00a0 Once, in college, I had an internship where my supervisor gave me one thing to do about every week or two that took me just a few hours, soContinue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":2997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[211,72,43,69],"tags":[227,202,224,225,125,208,223,226,82],"coauthors":[228],"class_list":["post-2994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colorado-2015","category-internships","category-students","category-sustainability","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-colorado","tag-connections","tag-culture","tag-energy","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-floods","tag-internship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/files\/2015\/06\/RMI-Boulder.jpg?fit=500%2C333&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2reSA-Mi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2994"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3339,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions\/3339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2994"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}