Name: Arlowe Willingham
Class Year: 2024
Major: Linguistics
Minor: Visual Studies
Hometown: Muscle Shoals, AL
Job Title: Language Revitalization Web-Toolkit Developer
Location: Swarthmore, PA
What's happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
This summer I am working with a group of interns on an ongoing language revitalization project for a North American Indigenous community. Together we are working with a community consultant to help develop educational language materials on the project website.
Why did you apply for this internship?
When I first read the internship description, I felt it was a great intersection of my linguistic interests in language revitalization and preservation work and previous experiences with visual studies and web development. Overall, I thought the internship would provide me the opportunity to do meaningful work in my academic field while pushing me to explore how linguistics actively intersects with areas of education studies, web design, and presentations of digital media.
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?
Due to the large body of information we are working with, one of the most challenging aspects has been effectively managing our time as a group. Ten weeks seems longer than it is at the beginning, and it's easy to take on bigger projects than you actually have time to complete. So, consistent reevaluation and discussion of what goals are reasonable to accomplish in our time frame has been crucial to our working process throughout.
What is most rewarding about your internship?
Developing professional and personal relationships with my peers and the community consultant on the project has been extremely rewarding to me. I love working with people, and our job this summer requires us to have a high level of familiarity and respect with one another due to the subject matter. I'm very grateful for everyone I have met this summer, and have definitely made some lasting connections through this work.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.