
Department of Planning and Land Management Intern, Garrett County Government
Major: Geographical Sciences, Geospatial Data Science Concentration
Minor: Computer Science
Class Year: 2023
What was a typical week like in your internship position?
Every day of my internship I was researching and learning how to update the county tax parcels in ArcGIS Pro and working to make the mass update more dynamic and efficient. I would also spend time digitizing county storm water paper maps. To finish this project I spent time coding, developing technical skills by taking courses on ESRI, communicating with my supervisor when I needed help, and doing outside research on errors and different approaches for how to manipulate databases with large amounts of data.
What do you enjoy most about your current position?
I enjoyed being able to develop my technical skills through working in programs I had never worked in before. I also enjoyed collaborating with my supervisor to create a workflow to do a mass update of the parcel files.
How has your coursework helped you in your internship?
Before working at my internship, I had only ever had coding experience which was very helpful when it came to analyzing and updating the previous code used. If I had taken my GIS courses before doing this internship, it would have been very helpful as I worked with vector data in ArcGIS Pro.
How did you locate your internship position?
I kind of lucked into this internship position, my dad had an interview with the office and they discussed issues that they were having with updating their parcel files and code. So he put me in contact with my supervisor and, over email, I discussed my interests in GIS and learning Python with her and she told me about projects that she had in mind for me to work on. After this, we had a Teams meeting where we were able to talk about the projects more in depth, my skills, and what the timeline for my internship would be.
Advice for students:
If you ever have questions at any point during the internship, don’t hesitate to ask! Your supervisor(s) is more than willing to help and they want you to succeed! Also, make sure to network with the people in your office, your professors, and advisors, you never know when an opportunity will come along in which your connections will help you succeed!