It takes a whole village to raise a child, so the proverb goes. In my experience, the same help is again needed as the nineteen-year-old villager flies the nest for the first time in pursuit of her first internship.

This week, I finalized my plans to work at an environmental nonprofit organization based in Sacramento. I would not be in this position had it not been for the help I solicited from countless individuals. (If this were an awards show and I was giving my thank-you speech, I would need to continue well past the point when the background music begins to play, ushering me off stage.)

I need to thank previous coworkers and colleagues who helped me gain the experience that has prepared me for this internship. I need to thank the CP&R team for helping me collect myself and all my necessary documents and connections. I need to thank my father, an environmental lawyer himself, for always piquing my interest in environmentalism and for talking with a colleague about his experience as a graduate at Pomona. I need to thank this man for being interested in a Scripps student and recommending that I get in contact with this nonprofit organization he helped build, giving a recommendation to me along with the nonprofit’s contact information. I need to thank the nonprofit’s executive director for taking time to speak with me about the opportunity and eventually offer me the position. I need to thank the communications team at this nonprofit, with whom I will be working closely, for helping me develop a project that will benefit this organization. I need to thank the faculty in Claremont for helping me parse through my thoughts regarding my professional and academic interests. I suppose that when I lease or sublease an apartment in the state capital, I’ll have to thank those renters too. And most of all I need to thank my entire family, for their multidimensional forms of support as I prepare to live my first summer away from home.

I feel that this internship truly marks my real first step into the light of my future career. Sometimes I wonder: besides my responsibilities and my heightened knowledge and awareness about what goes on around me, am I so different now from who I was in that bygone age of childhood?

I remember elementary, middle, and high school Stephanie so clearly. I sometimes refuse to accept that I am not that person anymore. When I celebrated my nineteenth birthday a month ago, away from home, family, and without my customary homemade cake, I panicked as I felt a great divide fall between my current self and my youthful self. A final year of teenagedom!

My first blazer. I chose one that was not so serious to mitigate the emotional baggage that comes with purchasing my first piece of true professional attire.

Honestly, it was not until I purchased my first blazer online two weeks later that I finally came to terms with my age and all the responsibilities that come with time. My family called me on my birthday, and they have been with me I have navigated the tricky waters towards my summer internship opportunity. If there is one thing I have learned after all the triumphs and travails of my first-year experience, it is that lamenting over the past is silly. As times change, we change, and the obligations we have adjust accordingly, the one thing that we can always count on is the support system we have sought that has made us who we are today. And there will always, always be people we can turn to for help. I look forward to my summer internship with great enthusiasm, and I cannot wait to share my experience with all the people who helped me land in this position in the first place.