Description / Reflection
While embarking on this journey to gain a piece of the real world, myself and another animas student were lucky enough to collaborate with one of Durango, CO local skate shop. We interned with Ty Russel the owner of Concrete Sk8 shop and gained some insightful aspects of owning and running a local business. I started my first day off learning where the light switches and cleaning supply was. Opening the shop everyday includes setting up the signs, turning on skate videos/music. I cleaned and maintained the shop throughout my entire internship. I gained a lot of helpful insights from this experience. Ty showed us the seven key steps to successfully make a sale. These skills without a doubt were the most important and well developed during my link : greet customer, ask 5 questions, Identify needs and wants, discuss product knowledge, suggest alternatives and advice, suggest initial merchandise, closing. I hope to have brought a bold motivated intuitive "mentie" that represented the culture, knowledge and respect of Animas High School and to leave the mark that what Ty taught me, will be a life long skill and creating a good work ethics. Knowing how to use these tools will provide me to make a successful sale and utilize this knowledge for further jobs and careers.
During my link internship the average day would go by very slowly and I could see that being a challenge to not wanting this career in my future. I've always had the idea to open up a local skate shop business, but after seeing how slow pace the activity, physical labor, and everything else at this job ran so slowly, I do not see myself in this same position in 10 years. I'm a very active person and would need the fast pace to really keep me going. I took very few steps to find this internship. I only reached out and contacted one person actually. I was aware of the internship and went into Concrete one day to buy a new skateboard and asked Ty if he knew anything about Animas High Schools link internship program and it turns out he has had an intern from Animas back in 2014! So he was already informed about the requirements. We had one little concern that we wouldn't be able to get enough hours and have to push into the summer, but I ended up making the cut.
I choose to be at Concrete Sk8 shop because simply I am a skater and there is no other appealing internship to me in this town. When I get out of high school I intend on pursuing automotive tech and get my trade in mechanics, so there was potential to choose my link at one of the local mechanics and gain some new comprehension on that career.
During my link internship the average day would go by very slowly and I could see that being a challenge to not wanting this career in my future. I've always had the idea to open up a local skate shop business, but after seeing how slow pace the activity, physical labor, and everything else at this job ran so slowly, I do not see myself in this same position in 10 years. I'm a very active person and would need the fast pace to really keep me going. I took very few steps to find this internship. I only reached out and contacted one person actually. I was aware of the internship and went into Concrete one day to buy a new skateboard and asked Ty if he knew anything about Animas High Schools link internship program and it turns out he has had an intern from Animas back in 2014! So he was already informed about the requirements. We had one little concern that we wouldn't be able to get enough hours and have to push into the summer, but I ended up making the cut.
I choose to be at Concrete Sk8 shop because simply I am a skater and there is no other appealing internship to me in this town. When I get out of high school I intend on pursuing automotive tech and get my trade in mechanics, so there was potential to choose my link at one of the local mechanics and gain some new comprehension on that career.
To prepare for link I had to think about the tools that I have already been taught at Animas and how I can incorporate them into my link internship. I went into this internship utilizing my social skills and advocating for new knowledge. I had to make a lot of conversation during link in order to reach the sale goal. I had to create a scenario in order to hook our customer in and get them interested in the product. With the tools that animas has taught me, it made my link experience run so much smoother!
Overall I really enjoyed this project and am very glad I got to gain this experience of getting out there in the real world. It was great to get information about running and owning a local business. Before this internship I had many thoughts about opening up a skate shop in some location after high school, but after seeing how slow pace and how little support local shops get It really swayed my view on future careers, so that was essential to know that this is not the job for me.