Pink skies and moist morning dew, accompanied by an inviting cool summer breeze, were my peace and serenity this summer. This summer, I worked at Mount Pleasant Golf Course in Baltimore City. Working full-time at this historic municipal course helped develop professional skills I desperately needed to work on, such as time management, commitment, and self-actualization.
Time management is something that I have always struggled with, whether it was school, practice, or just going over to my girlfriend's house. I am ALWAYS late. So, when reflecting on the internship before I started, I knew it was something I wanted and needed to develop if I wanted success in a professional environment. So, the first day of work comes around, and I wake up to a call from my good friend, who I work with, Matt. The time was 6 A.M., and I was supposed to be at work at 6. Yikes. I immediately got my stuff together and somehow made it to the course at 6:20, my heart beating wildly, almost certain I was going to be fired on my first day. Although when I walk down to the shop to profusely apologize to my boss Gil, he doesn’t even seem to care that I was late, he even apologized, saying, “Sorry Nate, we met in the clubhouse and I didn’t tell you where the shop is located.” He understood how bad I felt for making such an awful first impression, and with this slack that was cut for me, it actually helped me get to work on time and earlier! This was primarily due to my respecting him as a mentor and a boss,
with some feeling that I was indebted to him because he showed me grace when he had no obligation to do so. With this newfound confidence in myself to be on time, I was able to make it through the summer, waking up at unreasonably early times such as 2:30-3 in the morning for work.
Commitment to me has been a problem when it comes to work. I look too far ahead and get overwhelmed with the everyday in and out grind. I have seen it happen to me with workout routines, running, and summer work. But this time was different, with an hour goal I needed to hit and full-time expectations from my boss, I knew my commitment would be tested. So two weeks in, I am doing okay, but my commitment started to waver; I sensed this and was genuinely worried if I could get my 320 hours. Coincidentally, this was the same day I got paid, and when I looked at my paycheck, my commitment was reignited. I saw how many hours I truly worked and the overtime I received. I had never seen anything like this, and it completely validated all the hard work as well as the sacrifices I made for the internship. It wasn’t all about the money, though; the structured online check showed every little detail about where my money was going and how I earned it. See, in the past, I was paid at a fixed rate per job or under the table at an hourly rate, so I never really thought about the amount of time I worked. Seeing everything laid out in front of me made me so proud of myself, telling myself, “If you can work 85 hours over two weeks for fourteen days straight, you can get up this morning and go to work.”
My internship experience might differ from others because I am choosing not to focus on the physical aspects of my blue-collar internship at a golf course. I could go on for pages about cutting cups for greens, spraying chemicals for weeds/fungus, raking bunkers, weed whacking, and even changing water coolers. But I was already a hard worker, and I have been doing this style of work for as long as I can remember, even going back to helping my dad out in the yard. The skills that I needed to develop for myself to succeed in my professional life were battles with myself, flaws that were constantly shooting me in the foot. This internship has opened my eyes to the person I am and was always meant to be, and has changed my habits for the better. The early morning hours, when most were asleep, allowed me to privately reflect. The beauty of each rising sun gave me the calmness and stillness that I needed to allow myself to grow with each passing day. I never would have thought that a job that demands lots of physical labor would actually put my mind to work so much more.
