By Bryan habad Burzon

How do you start a summer vacation after surviving your freshman year? You start it by completing an eight-week-long summer internship. As if my freshman year wasn’t enough to fulfill my never-ending desire to be busy, I very happily signed up with the Rhetoric, English, and Music Departments as an intern to update websites and assist as needed. Throughout the summer, my day consisted of being at work at 8:30 in the morning, either in the library or the Fine Arts office, and working till 10:00 am. Then I would take a break and get the mail and return to the exciting world of website updating until noon which is when my lunch time starts. I would return at 1:00 in the afternoon and update the website or send out correspondence until it was time to leave, around 5:30 in the afternoon.

            As structured as it may sound, working with the Rhetoric Department was far more interesting than I would have ever imagined. I spent time working on albums to put on the website. I got to see a glimpse of the past and the previous Rhetoric majors through the pictures I edited and posted. In addition to posting and editing pictures, I got to help Professor McDorman with a study that he was conducting. Some of his research required a lot of background material from the Sports Illustrated website, so I printed all of the photos that were posted on their website within a specific time frame. It took a little while, but it was pretty fun looking at the albums. I mean, you can’t really complain when many of the pictures that you printed were pictures of cheerleaders cheering at some kind of sport venue. Although, as soon as I get home, I know I’ll be planting baby trees;  if you do the math of 100 albums times an average of 15 pictures in each album, not even compensating for the ones that had more than 15 pictures, you get 1500 pages of pictures. Talk about killing trees! I knew it was for a good cause so I don’t feel bad, but just in case though, I will plant some trees in my back yard to compensate for the few albums that had more than 15 pictures.

            Working with Rhetoric was an experience that not only taught me how the world of website updating is both frustrating and lonesome at times, but it showed me that the professors here at Wabash College who might seem intimidating at first sight are “actual people.” Ever since I came here, I’ve been intimidated by the professors, but this internship really showed me that they are normal people, too, and that is a lesson to be learned. As they say, “don’t judge a book by its cover.”