Iowa Intern Insights

Hi! My name is Brandi Dye, and I am one of the communications interns in the Iowa AARP office for the summer. I have only been at AARP for a week, so I don’t know if I have any insights, but here goes nothing…

AARP is huge. That is what I learned in the past week. I obviously knew, on an intellectual level, that AARP was a national organization. But the true scope of that is a tad bit mind boggling. On my first day, I chatted with interns from New Jersey to South Dakota (via teleconference), all while listening in to what the interns in D.C. were up to.

Because of the size of AARP, I have spent my first week being a bit bogged down by procedural necessities. Lots of video tutorials and such. But, on the bright side, me and my fellow interns are bonded for life after surviving a six-hour teleconference together. And I am sure there will be plenty more intern bonding activities. There are envelopes to be stuffed, stickers to be stuck, booths to be manned. But honestly, those are going to be some of this summer’s most fun times. Twenty years from now, I won’t remember all of the tweets I wrote, but I will remember the days I spent manning booths at baseball games or the Iowa State Fair. That’s the beauty of a communications internship: not even an office job is a desk job.

This summer, I will be getting the best of both worlds: I’ll get to write and communicate about how AARP is helping the 50+ community in Iowa; but I will also get to go out and interact with that community. I will be doing my part to learn what the 50+ of Iowa need and want and taking steps to make those things happen.