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CreativeMC

Redwoods Rising Apprenticeship

May - August 2019 • Orick, CA

What I liked

I am so thankful and appreciative of the hands on field work we were able to conduct as a team and individually. This experience is something not many people get the opportunity to have and I appreciated every second of it. My crew of all women( 4 students and two leads) worked as the rare plants surveying crew and it was such an experience to have an all women’s crew. It proved to us and others how strong we are trekking through rugged, steep forest in the heat and rain using our knowledge on plants to find, identify, and describe their habitat for later use to better understand rare/sensitive plant communities. This data we collected is so important to the beginning of the restoration of old growth redwood forests as we are the first team to go out and survey the land before anything else can happen to it. This summer is a memory and skill set I will never forget.

What I wish was different

The apprenticeship is fairly new, it was only the second summer up and running so there were a lot of kinks to work out with planning and scheduling and renting or purchasing of resources needed to properly conduct work. Other than that I loved the entire experience even with all of the chaos in the beginning.

Advice

To anyone wanting to apply to this apprenticeship, don’t give up in trying to get the position. I wasn’t hired at first but I kept persistence in letting the people hiring students know that I wanted this bad and a month before the apprenticeship began I got the job due to someone dropping out. I am unbelievably lucky for this chance and I put hard work into this summer to show to my higher ups and my peers that I wanted this and I could succeed. Make sure you have a good background of the position you’re applying for but don’t stress out if you don’t know everything. No one is expecting you as a student new to field work to know everything and be able to identify every plant or how to use all the equipment. All of that is the experience your leads are going to teach you throughout the summer.
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