Administrative intern Rebecka interviews fellow intern Maya about her experience at ITA.
Maya Gold, ITA Administrative Intern
Rebecka Ibarra, ITA Administrative Intern
Rebecka: I would love to learn a little bit more about your background. What are you studying and how did you become interested in this internship?
Maya: I go to the University of Kansas, which is located in Lawrence, Kansas. I will be a senior in the fall studying dance and minoring in psychology. My ultimate goal is to go into dance therapy and be involved in the creative arts therapies so that’s why when I saw this internship, I thought it’d be a fantastic opportunity for me to develop the skills that I’ll need to eventually go into this field.
Rebecka: Congratulations! How did you get interested in dance therapy?
Maya: I went to Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and every other year my high school has a fine arts festival called Odyssey. When I was a junior, I heard that there was a session about dance therapy in the creative arts therapies. It actually wasn’t on my schedule, but it was on a friend’s schedule and so I switched tickets with my friend. After going to the session, I absolutely fell in love with it. I thought, what a cool opportunity to be able to combine my passion for the arts and dance and my passion for helping others. From there, I thought this is what I want to do.
Rebecka: I know you’re doing an administrative internship. Can you tell us a little bit about the projects that you’re working on?
Maya: Like you said, I’m an administrative intern for the summer and my supervisor is Jenni Rook, who is the executive director of ITA. I’ve been working on the board meeting packets, gathering all the information that the board is going to discuss during the meetings and putting it into one big file that everyone can have access to and the meeting can flow a little bit better. I’m also working on some data entries and Salesforce entries. I just recently finished a resource packet that has a bunch of different resources in the Evanston and Chicago area for mental health and helping people. I contacted different facilities in the area, making sure that they had certain requirements that the packet was needing and getting that information written down, getting it back to the community, and then receiving information back that they were all good to go.
Rebecka: It seems like you get a taste of everything.
Maya: Definitely, which I think is a really good part of this internship. They make sure that we’re doing a little bit of everything. I work hybrid as a part time intern so when I’m in the office, it’s nice having that opportunity still to meet some of the other interns, therapists, and other staff at ITA, and just being immersed in the environment there is really nice. So it’s nice, having like, both of the same- like both where you can also work at home and work at ITA. So again with that variety. They really do a great job of giving us a variety of things to work with.
Rebecka: Closing question: can you describe a day in your dream career?
Maya: I would say my dream career would probably be- I’d probably be… let’s say I would be back in Chicago; my family is all in Chicago so that’s another important factor. I would wake up and take classes in a dance company, a small dance company, and I would then teach dance during the day or in the early afternoon, and then do dance therapy at night or vice versa. I kind of talked about doing a variety things. I like having that like versatility. And so I think as a dream career, having a little bit of everything within the arts and with dance would be a really great idea of what my dream, my dream day in my life would be for my future career.
Rebecka: That sounds amazing! Thank you so much for talking with me and have a great rest of your internship.
Maya: Thank you so much.