Author: William

We are nearing the end of the semester and it was a pleasure having to work with NYPIRG, in the beginning, I never knew what being an activist was like. It was an amazing experience and I learned a lot especially improving my socializing skill when I phone banked students about getting out there and vote early, attending meetings weekly with my group talking about different topics and suggesting ideas that will help empower our statement on global health, environment , and people’s lives.

For this week’s assignment, I was to attend a webinar and so I joined Turnbull Design Speaker Final Series where the guest speaker Sara Jensen Carr an Assistant Professor in Architecture, Urbanism, and Landscape at Northeastern University. She talked about how design plays a role in resilience to disasters and climate changes. Where designing a building the designer will have to put themselves at the viewpoint of the person that’s living in that area and how will it affect them. The benefits of having a clean neighborhood are where people living in the city have access to healthy housing, fresh air, fresh water, and green space for all. After she talked about how Covid-19 has affected families and that a family of 9 is living in a small apartment in New York having 2 rooms and a living room can affect their health.

With little time left in finding an internship, I set up a zoom session with Professor Goetz to refine my resume and portfolio. We talked about organizing the categories my work goes in and getting more work onto my portfolio website that can show what I can do and the work that I have done to show my skills.

Finally, we are at the week where midterms haunt students and they are being occupied with materials that will prepare them to ace the test. For this week I basically focused on phone banking students to let them know that voting has already begun in NY that if they are eligible they should be ready to vote and have a voter plan ready. It was a good experience for me since you will be calling the numbers on the list they give you and explaining the details for voting and spreading the word that voting is important for your future. When I called the numbers and spoke to the students I was a bit nervous since this was the first time that I’m calling students and letting them know voting is an important factor moving forward in their studies.

After being an Intern at NYPIRG for 3 weeks it is a great place to socialize and join events that they host weekly for students who care about the environment or someone who wants to know more of what NYPIRG does to improve life in New York. The work that I do are not design related but where you use your voice and actions to have change happen for a better cause.

Attended the Turnbull Design Speaker Series where gues speaker Ehsan Noursalehi a senior product designer at Samsara.

Ehsan talks about why he became a designer and his journey through his career,  he also talked about his early life where he never knew what a designer is. He mentioned how his family was his greatest support, it was a great experience on how lego was his inspiration to get into design. He then went on talking about how his first design project called “Bump” was about prosthetics and how he can help millions of amputees, he went on to design t-shirts , websites, and etc. While designing for amputees, the group that Ehsan was with traveled to the facility around the world where his team further understand what the amputees are looking for and how the prosthetic they create are what the amputees are looking for, which are accessible, affordable, and durable.

The experience was amazing, I learned a lot about how design can change the life of many and in a way inspire those around you. Unfortunately for the amputee project was canceled due to an unforeseen circumstance but in the end, Ehsan was happy that he was able to work on the project and that it was a successful launch.

You can learn more about Ehsan at http://www.nourfolio.com/.

I attended a virtual Networking event where guest speaker Evan Maeda a Lead Product Designer at The New York Times talks about his past about how he landed his first internship. While he was talking about his first internship, one thing that struck me was the word networking as it was mentioned in the internship class numerous times, networking he mentioned is a great tool to find an internship since you are able to have others help you in finding one than having to look for one yourself. It was an amazing experience as many city tech students attended the event and were able to get a lot of helpful tips for the students who are in their freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior years. There’s also part two of the networking event that I highly recommend to any students who are interested in joining.

After looking for an internship online for the second I still haven’t received any replies back in my email and I’m worried that I won’t be able to get an internship since I don’t have a strong portfolio to compete with other people, but I’m not giving up since there are many internship opportunities not just in New York but in other states as well and outside of the country. I also applied to CUNY Cultural Corp suggested by Professor Goetz to see if I’m able to get an internship there.