Everywhere is a Classroom: Learning Through Internships Abroad
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Logistics: Securing a Position
In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that my internship abroad came about partly through luck. The summer before studying abroad, I worked at a public space consultancy in New York called Project for Public Spaces. One day, we had a guest speaker give a talk during lunch: Lucinda Hartley, the co-founder and CEO of CoDesign Studio, an urban design organization in—you guessed it—Melbourne, Australia. Needless to say, I was excited to sit in on her lecture and promptly approached her to speak about my plan to study in Melbourne later that year. She offered me her business card and I assured her that I would be in touch. By February, after communicating with several other potential employers in Australia and deciding that CoDesign offered the best opportunity to learn about Melbourne’s urban design revolution, I was submitting an application to the organization’s internship program. I was invited for an interview the following week and began working the week after that.People to Meet, Places to See
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Learning How a Country Works
In any professional setting, you tend to learn a lot about the political, economic, social, and cultural contexts in which you work. This was no different for my time at CoDesign Studio. In reading reports, attending workshops, speaking to government officials, and![](https://ifsa-butler.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Smithson5-300x225.jpg)
From Office to Classroom to Home and Back Again
In exciting and surprising ways, my academic and professional experiences in Melbourne and New York played off of one another. Because I pursued work in an area of deep personal interest, I found many overlaps between my work in the office and the![](https://ifsa-butler.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Smithson8-300x225.jpg)