Reflection Paper

Samar Sarda

Intern/Mentor-GT
Mrs. Bagley
1/14/16
I have been interning at the student services office of Centennial High School this year.
The student services office is where the guidance counselors of our school are located and they
are responsible for guiding students on their high school career. I intern with Mrs. Mauser, a
guidance counselor, and work with her to help ease the transition of transfer students to
Centennial. I am also working with the Eagle Ambassadors of Centennial, a new student led
group working to improve Centennial High School and give it a much friendlier environment. At
this point in my mentorship, I have been able to improve the materials given to transfer students
and have been able to discuss many issues important to our school at the Eagle Ambassador
meetings.
During my time at the student services office, I have come across many interesting things
that have made this mentorship memorable. One day I was able to shadow two students who
were being registered at the student services office and I was able to head a meeting of transfer
students. At these two different experiences, I was able to learn more about how transfer students

felt when they first came to Centennial, and how those feelings changed after a few months at the
school. I have also learned much from the Eagle Ambassador meetings we have had throughout
the course of the year. Through these meetings I have learned about the importance of teamwork
and determination. At these meetings we completed team building activities and brainstormed
many ideas together as we worked in groups. We were able to come up with more ideas to
improve the school at one of these meetings, than Mrs. Mauser and I had come up with the entire
year. These meetings will help in the future to help achieve my goals for later in the year.
There are so many things I love about my internship. My mentor, Mrs. Mauser, has
helped me immensely in achieving my goals for this year. She has let me stay after school to
work with her and has allotted a large amount of time from her schedule to work with me this
year. The people who work at the student services office are very helpful and are supportive of
my work. Mrs. Hebler, Mrs. McKechnie, Mr. Kriner, and Mrs. Sanders have all asked me about
the progress of my project and provided valuable advice. Once Mrs. McKechnie told Mrs.
Mauser and myself about a transfer student who was having trouble fitting in, which provided
new insight on how some transfer students have trouble making new friends. Along with the
people I work with, I have also enjoyed the opportunities provided to me by this internship. From
providing me access to the schools yearbook team, to letting me shadow the two students being
enrolled, Mrs. Mauser has went out of her way on multiple occasions to make my project as most
interesting and rewarding.
Before my time at my internship, I would complete all my assignments independently
with relative success. However, during my time with the Eagle Ambassadors I have seen the
efficiency of team work. In the beginning of the year, Mrs. Mauser and I brainstormed ideas for
the Eagle Ambassadors to work on, many of our ideas were great and plausible goals for the
year. The Eagle Ambassadors were able to generate almost double the amount of ideas and many

of the ideas they generated were just as great as or greater than the ones we generated. I was not
expecting this since in my previous experiences, groups of large sizes tended to be inefficient
and were unable to accomplish other projects. Through my internship, I have also learned more
about the problems faced by transfer students. When Mrs. Mauser and I arranged a meeting for
all transfer students to attend, we were able to discuss with the transfer students what they felt
were important issues to them. Many of them stated that they felt the lunch schedule was
confusing and felt that at their orientation the schedule should have been explained better. Many
of the students also complained about the food served in the cafeteria, which I found to be quite
hilarious. Another complaint that seemed to stick out was the difficulty of transfer students to
become parts of clubs and organizations at Centennial. After learning of the concerns of the
transfer students, I was able to better focus my goals for this year so that the most popular
concerns would be my top priorities.
Although my mentorship has been a very welcoming environment, I have faced some
challenges this year. One major problem I faced was the nature of my internship itself. I had a
quiet personality, while this internship required me to interact often with others to be able to
accomplish my goals. One instance of this was when I had to create a fun facts page for the
school, but everything I created lacked a sense of artistic ability and creativeness. In order to
create a fun facts page that would be sufficient for the orientation packet, I contacted the
yearbook team with Mrs. Mauser and was able to delegate the creation of the fun facts page to
them. I also had to communicate my ideas to the Eagle Ambassadors group to ensure they would
be discussed and decided upon. My increased social involvement at this internship initially
bothered me, but I was able to overcome this. Another problem I faced was that initially I did not
have a specific project in mind for the year, but Mrs. Mauser and Mrs. Hafets guided me in the
right direction by suggesting I work to improve the orientation video this year. The problems I

faced earlier this year did deter my progress slightly, but I was able to overcome them, and now I
am confident that I will be able to overcome problems I face in the future.
So far this year I have been able to improve the orientation materials a given to new
students during orientation and to transfer students when they enroll. Later on this year I plan to
work on an orientation video that expresses Centennials eagle pride effectively and I plan on
working more with the Eagle Ambassadors to improve our school. For the video, Mrs. Hafets
wanted us to create a flash mob video in which the entire school would involved in welcoming
new students to Centennial. One of the ideas discussed in Eagle Ambassadors was the placement
of street signs throughout the school to make it easier to navigate the hallways for transfer
students and normal students alike, this idea was feasible and was decided to be most useful of
our other ideas. We plan on implementing the street signs at some point in late third or early
fourth quarter. With the opportunities provided to me with this internship I hope to make
Centennial High School a better place for all students.