My Education Internship at Mill Mountain Zoo
The summer of 2015 turned out to be a busy summer for me. I spent the first half of the summer studying abroad in Switzerland and then spent the rest of my summer working as an education intern for the Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke, Virginia. My duties as an education intern included giving tours of the zoo, daily “meet and greets” with education ambassadors, assisting with camp activities, and helping to train the new volunteers at the zoo.
My favorite part of the job by far was the daily meet and greets with the public. I could take out any one of our education ambassadors and bring them out for the public to interact with. Normally, giving a tour, I don’t have an animal with me to engage the audience, but with meet and greets, my entire job is to walk around the zoo teaching the patrons about the particular animal I’m holding. Now these animals range from a red-tailed boa constrictor, chinchilla, ball python, box turtle, to a ferret, and I loved every single one of them. Each animal has a different personality and learning how every animal was different was the best part of my job.
On top of these duties, as an intern I had to complete a project by the end of my time at the zoo. For this, I finished editing and producing numerous educational videos for the zoo. The entire internship was an absolute blast and I learned so much about how zoos operate, public perception of zoos, and how to handle various types of animals to show the public. I also got to work on my public speaking skills, and continue to build my general wildlife knowledge.
