Jacob Bialk Internship

November 7, 2018

Jacob Bialk is a student at the University of Maryland studying Agricultural Business Management through the Institute of Applied Agriculture. He is a second-year student who plans to graduate in the Spring semester of 2019. He did his internship with a landscaping company called Signature Landscaping which is based out of the Eastern Shore of Maryland in East New Market.

Bialk’s internship offered him a variety of learning opportunities. He learned to operate different kinds of machinery: an excavator, a front loader, and a forklift. He was placed on different job sites and assigned a different job at each one. He built beautiful patios out of stone, and he leveled ground at multiple job sites for buildings and patios to be built on top.  The most unique thing he did was design and dig a drainage pond.  As with many learning opportunities, mishaps do occur and Bialk experienced that, too, when he flipped an excavator down a hill while working. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Although his internship officially started in May 2018, Bialk had done some work for the company beforehand. In addition, he had been doing personal landscape work to gain some experience so he wasn’t going into the internship blind.  He has always had an interest in landscaping, and he selected this particular internship because it was close to his hometown so he was familiar with the area. He hoped this internship would show him the ins and outs of the company, so he could make a better decision on whether or not to pursue this career path after graduation.

Bialk has not made a decision if he is going to pursue landscaping after college, but the internship definitely opened his eyes to how broad the industry truly is. He has also gained a lot of skills, like machinery operation, that he could use in other career fields. Bialk was able to use the lessons from the classes this summer to give him a guide on what to be looking at and watching for during his work day. He says he will use this experience as he chooses a career path after graduation and it will help him secure a job.