Finishing Up the Summer

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“Goodbye to another summer,” reads the gmail-chat tag line of one of our summer interns here, Clare, who has already gone back to university in New Brunswick. We all spent the last week finalizing our reports, meeting with our supervisors here and handing in the completed projects for the summer internship. The desks were cleaned out and the WYA house cleaned top to bottom. Them we all went to get ice cream, and remembered together some of the summer moments, at the United Nations, the coffee house, the day it rained so hard the basement flooded and we had to go mop it up in our work slacks and dresses. We remembered who snored loudly and kept everyone awake, who took too long in the shower, who fell asleep in the bathroom one night so the roommates had to go looking for her. You pace your life so tirelessly, and yet I am always amazed that things come to an end so fast. And as the interns pack up and leave, everyone knows it was a very good summer, and something very good happened here these months, and this is not the last we will see of each other, even though we all go to different places from here.

Here are a few of their final thoughts on the summer. This first one was written by Marie Murray, who will be returning to university in New Jersey this fall to finish up her degree in international relations.

I’m about to clear out my desk and start packing up as the WYA internship is coming to an end. The summer has flown by very quickly leaving me reluctant to go home and start a new school year. But just as I am regretting that my three months at World Youth Alliance are over, I am also looking forward to applying what I have learned here to my classes this fall. My international relations major will give me plenty of opportunities to keep putting the ideas and principles of WYA into practice. It is hard to say goodbye to everyone, especially all the international interns, but at least I live close enough for occasional visits to the office. In fact, I’ll probably be returning next week during the WYA Staff Meetings to sample one of the regional dinners. And we still have tonight to enjoy the end of our summer together with some quality beer at The Ginger Man…

Marie Murray – World Youth Alliance Intern – Summer 2008

And here is one from Nicole Lau, an intern from Hong Kong who studied in Toronto. Nicole recently accepted a prestigious internship position in Washington D.C. She left yesterday, here is what she said.

Summer at WYA was amazing. We spent weeks at the United Nations, trying to make connections and explain the value in keeping human dignity central to public policy to unsuspecting UN delegations. We explored the city together. As an intern at World Youth Alliance we were each entrusted with projects to design and organize. As we effectively part ways for September, I’m sure we’ll keep in touch and add to our collective wealth of experiences. The best way to form lifelong friendships is indeed to work and live together in Manhattan 🙂 Thank you WYA for an unforgettable summer!

Nicole Lau – World Youth Alliance Intern – Summer 2008

In the coming days there will be more final thoughts from summer interns, sad to leave the WYA house but excited to take what they have learned back to schools and jobs elsewhere. Goodbye to another summer indeed.