I have chosen to post a series of pictures demonstrating the field trips that I have been helping out with by attending. Part of the work at Pro Peninsula involves visiting various elementary schools and getting the students to become really involved in helping save the environment and connected with becoming active and making a difference by working together. This is done by taking the classes to Nature Centers and setting up a Pen Pal system between children here in San Diego and children of the same age in Mexico. We even took a class on a whale watching trip off of the coast of the San Diego Bay so that they could get a personal look at what they are working for.


This is a photo of some of the students drawing pictures of whales for their Pen Pals in the Baja California Peninsula. The children were very good with working together to complete their work.



This is another photo of the kids working together to make their cards as creative as possible for their pen pals.



This was taken as we departed from San Diego Bay on our whale watching trip. I like this picture because you can see the skyline in the background as well as almost the whole class of children.






This was the clearest picture that I could get of the dolphins actually jumping out of the water. It was very difficult to capture because they would appear and dissapear very suddenly, but it was very exciting to see.




This was taken from one of our field trips to the Chula Vista Nature Center, where the children got to see all different types of marine life. I like this picture because I find seahorses to be very interesting creatures.


One of the main attractions of the field trip was the Sea Turtles, which are the primary concern of the Pro Peninsula foundation.


This was also taken at the Chula Vista Nature Center. I like the picture because of all of the colors that the Octopus uses to blend in with his surroundings.



There's not very much to this picture, but I like it because in the foreground you can see one of the students holding a camera and in the distance you can see a fin of one of the dolphins that the children were so excited to see. It was very difficult to capture anything that contained both the children and the wild life.

Giuliana Schroeder, Communications and Marketing Manager at Pro Peninsula, Downtown San Diego

Here are three questions from the interview with my mentor that really stood out to me:

What are the benefits/negative aspects of traveling and moving so often while growing up?
I think that the benefits mostly involve being able to adapt better to change getting to know different people. Through doing this through my childhood and growing up I had found that life, businesses and relationships all revolve around creating connections with people, so I think this allowed me to create a lot of different connections in a lot of different networks and places that have given me a lot of confidence and a lot of options, especially if I am put in a position where I need to move around or change jobs. The setbacks that you don’t have that sense of creating roots somewhere, I’ve always felt like I’m from many places, and I’ve moved a lot so I feel like I don’t have as many people that I can really identify with because no one was changing locations as often as me.


What is your favorite part of working at Pro Peninsula?
I love a lot of things about it. When I was first looking for a job in the environmental field I always wanted to somehow mix the idea that I was giving back to Mexico , that I was able to use both languages, that I was able to use art in my work as well as education, and the events I get to plan are very fun. I like a lot of parts of my job but if I had to choose, probably the big answer would be what we stand for. To help the community and create a long term goal in environmental conservation.


How do you think that all the traveling you’ve done has really benefitted you over the years?
Having to do with being able to adapt easily to change, being able to mature and be more independent. I moved to Italy for a year when I graduated high school by myself and found an apartment by myself, so I think that I learned not having someone to turn to and having to figure it out on my own, that gave me a lot of independence, which is something that people in my family cannot necessarily relate to. I think that’s what I benefitted from the most.

Last week I went to a 6th grade classroom in which the students were writing to pen pals in Mexico. Some of the students knew spanish and others didn't, so they had to really work together to put together these letters. I think that this was an excellent example of collaboration and the difference that it can make.
















There are only two other people working in this office, so during a typical work day I generally work directly with no more than two people. Indirectly, I coordinate often with more people over email in an effort to work together when it is not possible to have direct contact. For exaple, I am now emailing the person in charge of printing the pdf documents of the Wild & Scenic film festival posters that I have been editing on photoshop for the past couple of weeks. Over email he is sending me specific things that need to be altered in order for him to print out the posters and I am taking his advice and asking for help with parts that I do not understand. On a field trip day, I will have direct collaboration with at least 20 people.

Direct collaboration with others is important because it allows you to be very clear on what you are doing and enables all your questions or concerns to be answered. Collaboration with multiple people is also good because it allows for more than just one person's ideas to be presented, which leads to better results.

A lot of time the work that I do here is affecting many people who I have never directly made contact with. For instance, when I update the databases with member's names and addresses or send out thank you notes to different people, it makes a difference in many people's lives, although to me it is just a small task.

The more advanced technology becomes, the less we will have a need for direct contact. There are already ways for people to talk to and see eachother without being in the same room or even the same fascility. My guess is that the further into the future we get, the less often we will have direct collaboration.

This week at internship, I started to develop a lot more work and actually felt like I really offered a good amount of help for the company. I took an account of all the t-shirts Pro Peninsula has for sale, which took very long but is a great help for my mentor. I also redid the pictures for the kid's page of the Pro Peninsula website as well as created a page for the Wild and Scenic film festival website and linked it to the home page. I also designed the Wild and Scenic poster, and postcard front and back on photoshop. Yesterday I went with Frances on a field trip to a 6th grade classroom in which the students had pen pals in Baja and helped them write back to their pen pals in Spanish.

Blog #9-Background Info

I asked my mentor a few questions about her background and she decided to send some of her answers to me in email form so I could have it documented.

"Soo here’s a bit of background for you
I was raised as a binational kid, I have dual citizenship, and moved back and forth between San Diego, Mexico City, and Cuernavaca, Morelos for most of my life.
I got my BA in humanities at Soka University of America, a liberal arts school in OC whose main focus is to promote the idea of “creating value”, which is the literal meaning of Soka (a Japanese work). I also have a Minor in Fine Arts
Travelled and lived all over after high school, in between college studies, and post my BA degree : Florence, Tokyo, Mexico city, Seattle and its been by encompassing both college studies and travels that I decided to focus my efforts in the environment and education field.
I’ve worked all over in order to get here, many unrelated positions like more community service and public relations or advocacy and legislation promotion, but I think the job that got me here was at Pronatura Mexico AC, the largest Mexico-based environemental nonprofit, as a Communications and Publications Consultant for two years. I helped in events, website, translation, editor and writer of their magazine. Definitely the building blocks to where I stand today."

Working at Pro Peninsula for the past couple of weeks has really opened my eyes to many things that I had not thought about very often before this internship experience. For instance, working so much on marketing and website design has taught me to look at websites and graphic design advertisements in a new light, focusing on the work that it would take to actually design the advertisement and think of ideas to format it so that it will be more attention-grabbing for customers. Working here has also taught me to care more about the environmental issues that we are currently facing, which I usually do not pay enough attention to. I have learned a great amount about the difficulties that our environment is facing and the small things that we can do to make a difference.

Possible Questions:
How was it switching so often between Mexico and the US? Was this a positive experience?

What caused you to choose this job versus any other job dealing with the environment?

How did you come to start working at Pro Peninsula?

What do you think is the most positive thing about your job? What about while you were growing up?

What is some advice you could give to me as a junior in high school?

Blog #8

One of the characteristics that the people at my internship have that I would like to achieve is their ability to balance work and personal life. They are able to work a full day of tedious work and still manage to stay upbeat and not become overwhelmed. They do this by finding positive things that they enjoy about what they do and making the job into something that is enjoyable to them. For instance, they will plan more fun company dinners and events rather than just boring meetings. I think this is important because this internship experience has taught me to appreciate more the value of enjoying what you do for a living.