L.I.N.K. |
Business Description |
L.I.N.K. is something Animas High School Juniors do to explore potential careers. All of junior year, we prepare ourselves to reach out to businesses worldwide looking for an internship. We explore fields we are familiar with and ones that we are not. When we have decided on a mentor and an internship, we have 3 weeks to work 90 hours and complete a project of our choosing.
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Wink's Specialty Restoration is a restoration, repair, and maintenance shop in Aztec, NM. The owner of the establishment and my mentor for this experience was John Winkley. John specializes in Subaru's but together, we worked on everything from a new gen Volvo to a century old tractor.
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Preparation and Anticipation |
Reflection |
My L.I.N.K. plan changed two major times before I found my final internship. I originally planned to go to Costa Rica to work for the outward bound branch there. That fell through when they decided they were no longer able to take me. Feeling adventurous and driven by my previous failure I arranged to fly into Tlapacoyan, Mexico. There I was to work for a local tour company, Aventurec. However, in January of 2020, the first COVID-19 case was reported outside of China. At first, my journey to Mexico seemed doable. Eventually, in April, the Mexican government put a mandatory shutdown on adventure resorts like the one I was planning to work at. The same day, I called the man that would be my mentor from my dad's phone, and got a swift answer. I started a couple days later.
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I learned a lot of valuable skills from John and the people surrounding him. In addition to the memorization of the mechanical, electric, and hydraulic components that brilliantly come together to make a Subaru run for as long as they do, I learned patients, systemic thinking, and thoroughness. John taught me that to properly maintenance a machine, you need an adequate understanding of what makes it work. Something I got better at under John's watchful eye was asking questions about anything I was even the slightest bit unsure about. Working on a precision machine like a car requires that you do everything right, in the right order, and very specifically. My ability to think critically and chronologically about a mechanical task has gotten many times better, as evident by my ability to remove, balance, reinstall, and reprogram all of the wheels on my mother's car (see video).
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