My Latest Adventure

It sure is humbling to take an unpaid internship at 26 years old. I thought the days were behind me when I'd have to do something to get some kind of experience. But its good for me. I had my first day of my new internship last Monday and it was pretty incredible. It absolutely makes up for the fact that I'm not getting paid... almost.

In January I attended the Student Michigan Association of Planning Conference because my registration fee was covered by the school and it was in Ypsilanti, about 5 minutes drive from my apartment. I went with very little expectations and merely hoped that I would find one interesting person to talk to while I was there.

The opening speaker was a man named Harvey Hollins, the Director of the Governor's Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives. Never heard of it? I hadn't either until he spoke. The office was created in 2011 by Governor Snyder in an attempt to bolster the urban environments in Michigan. The main office, where Director Hollins works is in Detroit, but there are branch offices in Lansing and Grand Rapids and an emphasis placed on Kalamazoo, Saginaw, and other major urban areas in the state. The goal: create initiatives in these cities to attract and retain talent and jobs. It seems simple enough. It also seems like a good fit for an aspiring urban planner.

I'm not sure how others perceived Mr. Hollins when he spoke. Sometimes I think that simply because people are associated with certain others, in Mr. Hollins' case, associated with a Republican Governor, that sometimes people tune others out. I did not. I was captivated by what he had to say. He is a fairly dynamic speaker, not one who you hinge on every word, but certainly one who is relatable and approachable. During his speech, he spoke about the need for a healthy Detroit and planners who are willing to think about how to make change possible. And he spoke about some called the 'School-Anchor Initiative' that I was particularly interested in.

My understanding with this initiative, is that schools are being identified in neighborhoods where population has declined, but the neighborhood remains stable. Rather than closing a school and devastating a neighborhood, Mr Hollins has suggested that we work to recruit other services to help fund the schools and become more of a neighborhood center. Think health clinics, vocational training, and food pantries in the schools to be used to help the neighborhood obtain more services. In my mind, these are great things to think about in schools.

I skipped the rest of the conference to stay and chat with Mr. Hollins. I ended up with his business card and came back to do some research on his office. I wanted to work with him on this project. I soon discovered that his office hosts interns over the summer. I applied that day and ended up with an internship in a few weeks.

I'm looking forward to the experience and had my first taste of it all on Monday. Monday, a group of Michigan Senators in conjunction with my new office established a tour of Detroit that invited speakers from different organizations to speak about the good things happening in Detroit and addressed a few of the challenges. It ended with a bus tour of some of the new hotspots in the city and a look at the development that is coming Detroit's way. I guarantee in about 5 years you will not recognize the city.

On Monday I spoke to several high-ranking members of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (the people who are behind the Pure Michigan campaign), I spoke to Mayor Duggan of Detroit, talked to various Senators, including my own from Hillsdale, listened to the Detroit Police Chief and members of a few different community development groups, and heard from the man behind Quicken Loans, Dan Gilbert. The afternoon was spent touring most of the downtown buildings, seeing the insides of places you needed special access to see, visiting Belle Isle, the Villages on the east side, Midtown, and learning about the latest stuff coming to Detroit.

If this first day is any indication of how the rest of the internship is going to go, I think it is certainly worth the time I'm investing. If I play my cards right I can make sure people know my face. It just goes to show that you should always get out and talk to people and that you should always pursue anything that sounds interesting. You just never know how you might spend your next Monday.