4-4-11

One of the joys of working at this internship 12-15 hours a week means that there is a strong continuation of the work you do. You are able to participate in the request for assistance to the conservation plan, and possibly even the start of the practices. Today was a follow up day from all the field visits from the week before. Because Rich doesn't work on Fridays, and I work Monday through Wednesday, I feel like I usually get to see everything he works on. It also seems like there are certain things he will save for the days where us interns are in to finish. Today my major task was creating envelopes to send out to the four field visits with the information we had promised them. I worked on making soil maps for the clients and finding various information such as a brochure on the EWP and create a database of possible geotech engineers to help with building environmental retaining walls, as well as plants that would be useful on hillsides without creating a load weight. There was also a general letter from Rich telling them it was information following up the field visit. We also included relevant publications the NRCS and RCD had made about drainage near homes and fire control. Overall this was an extremely slow day for me and I got the feeling that Rich was really busy, but unable to delegate work to me. Because of the huge storm event, he was doing a lot of work contacting the large amount of people asking for help with landslides and road damage. This wasn't something I could help him with so I felt a bit unnecessary today. I really wished I had been able to help take some of the work, or possibly search through the NRCS databases to find applications these clients needed but occasionally there is work that I am not legally allowed to do. I guess its part of working for the federal department and from lacking experience.