Easily, one of the questions I get asked the most when I am not at school is, “what do you do at your job?” In my spare time, I work for the Department of Homeland Security. I began this job in June of 2007 as a summer internship in between my junior and senior years of high school. I wanted a job and to make money, so I just decided to something that was very interesting to me – working in IT. At the time, I was very interested in computers (still am) and I thought that if I could land this internship, it’d be a great way to make some connections before graduating high school.

For the most part, people always, ALWAYS will ask – what in the world does this job have to do with your schooling? I began as a public and urban affairs major. I switched to sociology. Now I’m getting a master’s in education administration. Let’s be real – it has absolutely nothing to do with my job in the truest sense. However, this job is the one that I’ve had for the longest and the one that I’ve undoubtedly learned the most from. It taught me that while I love the office environment and I do, reasonably, enjoy the responsibility of commuting and what not, I do love smaller cities more and I appreciate the ability to sleep in until 20 minutes before you have to be in the office.  There are also other times where I’ve realized that I like education more than technology, but both hold a big, big place in my professional heart.

My job deals, primarily, with technology. I work with customer relationship managers and projcect managers on numerous things. Each summer or winter that I go back they have a new project waiting for me to complete byt he time I return to school. The work environment is very fast paced and more importantly autonomous. There aren’t a lot of jobs where an intern is allowed to telework, for example.

For example, the above award I received to do long, long hours spent on a project in the summer of 2011, which involves the Department moving to a new campus and somewhat consolidating as well.

I really enjoy this job because of the connections that I’ve made – there are just a handful of people who still work there that were also there on my first day on June 25, 2007. My boss, Ben, is the one that wrote me specifically asking me to come back for the winter and assist with some projects they were working on. I think you know you have a fantastic job and an even better relationship with your boss when THEY are asking YOU to come work.

The main function of our office is to make sure that everyone in the Department can do their job. My roles are mostly in support of other managers and employees but I do love the aspect of not always having a large, important, security-threatening deliverable to be responsible for. But, you can tell, that service really is at the heart of this job.  While I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to return to this job, it will always have been my first job (obviously, important) and has taught me a majority of the lessons that I now use professionally.

I’m so grateful for such a fantastic job & this part of my life is probably something you didn’t know about me.