My experience as an internship for the Las Vegas Natural History Museum was incredible. I enjoyed my time at the museum where I was able to work in the collection and education departments. This internship has benefited my future career as an archaeologist. The skills that I have gained are handling and photographing items, cataloguing, data entry, and public speaking. This internship doe ties into my major of study which is anthropology with a focus in archaeology. I believe taking previous archaeological field and lab method courses have assisted with my success in this internship. A portion of archaeology is working with a collection, cataloguing, and the preservation of collected items. I am working towards a career as an archaeological field technician with the new skills that I have gained from my internship. At some point in my career within archaeology I would want to do collection work. I enjoyed the process of cataloguing and photographing items.
For incoming interns, I would like to offer the advice of having good communication with your supervisors. Let them know what your goals are, what you intend to accomplish, and what job positions you are looking to apply for after graduation. Informing them on this information allows them to help you gain skills for that specific role and to become a competitive candidate for that position.
A portion of my internship was designing and teaching an archaeological excavation workshop. The first portion of the workshop was an introduction to archaeology and the second portion was the activity. Participants were able to be archaeologists for the day where they would dig their own excavation unit to uncover artifacts and fill out a site form.