Name: Anna Thompson
Class Year: 2022
Major: Linguistics and Math
Hometown: El Segundo, Calif.
Internship Organization: LITS Digital Technology Summer Internship
Job Title: Great Law Project Summer Intern
Location: Remote
What鈥檚 happening at your internship?
My internship ended a few weeks ago, with the last week being a whirlwind of documentation for future interns and team members, in addition to some breakthroughs with bringing the Great Law text into its fully interactive form, how to name and organize the website in a way that is intuitive and accessible to non-linguists and especially high school community members, and creating quiz content for the grammar concepts.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I had reached out to Professor Riestenberg earlier in the year interested in working on the project, as it combined my interests in linguistics, computer science, and education in a meaningful way. When I heard about the summer internship opportunity to work on the project, I knew I wanted to apply.
What has been your favorite part of this internship?
Throughout the internship, our focus as interns was on accessibility and interactivity of the website. After a meeting with Professor Riestenberg to discuss how all of our webpages to teach grammar were educational tools, we realized we wanted to add quizzes to the webpages to give users a chance to practice their skills. I really loved experimenting with different question types and quiz formats, finding ways to challenge users, integrate the Great Law text, use less translation and more of the language itself, and more.
Working remotely for the first time? What has that experience been like for you?
While I have taken many classes online, it was my first time working remotely. At first, it was really lonely and somewhat stressful as my team members and I were not communicating as much, so we did not know what each other were working on. Once we started regularly messaging over Microsoft Teams, I felt a lot more comfortable and confident with what I was doing, as I could reach out to the other interns for feedback and help them as well. Altogether, I ended up really enjoying the experience, especially as our team balanced using Slack, which is written communication, and Zoom, spoken communication.
Visit the Summer 2020 Internships page to read more student stories.