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2010-12-20 15:43:38.000 – Kristin Raisanen,  Summit Intern

A snowier view than when my internship started

The Christmas festivities that Stacey and Mike spoke of earlier this week continued yesterday! Jen and I attempted to spread the Christmas cheer in the weather room with an old favorite, the construction paper chain. Last night, Charlie and Jeanine treated us to our own little holiday party filled with bacon wrapped scallops, red pepper jelly, spinach and artichoke dip, Swedish meatballs and a Christmas tree shaped cake with our own individual cake presents. Everything was delicious and it definitely felt like a Christmas feast! Stacey and Jen treated us to a little Christmas Concert and played the Christmas Carols they have been practicing for the last month (please see the November 22, 2010 obscast if you would like a taste of their musical abilities). I was also able to torture everyone with my favorite Christmas movie, ‘Love Actually’. Even our shift Grinch sat through half of the movie after I told him there was a car crash. Little did he know that it was only a minor fender bender.

With only 2 days left as a Mount Washington Observatory intern, I sit here, looking out at the lovely Northern Presidentials reflecting over the last seven months. I was invited to visit the summit one Wednesday before I started my internship. After a giggly ride down the mountain, I remember a little chat I had with Ken Rancourt, our Director of Summit Operations. He asked if I was excited and ready for my internship to start. I said ‘I’m so excited! It’s going to be so much fun!’ He quickly responded with ‘It’s not all fun, there’s going to be a lot of hard work.’ As soon as I started my internship, I realized we were both right, it was lots of fun but also lots of hard work. Like I said in my very first comment, interns do become jacks of all trades. From power washing and scraping the tower, learning how to do observations and relearning how to forecast to counting just about everything there is to count around here (paint cans, wires, shovels, plates, you name it, there is a good chance I counted it) and learning to walk around the summit without being blown over, all of it was hard, challenging work, but so much fun!

Now, as I prepare for the next step of life, finding a ‘real job’, I can only hope that the people I encounter in the future are as awesome and welcoming as the people I have met up here on the summit. I am a firm believer that you can enjoy anything, no matter how terrible or challenging, if you have a great group of people around you. The observers, my fellow interns, our summit museum supervisors, all the State Park Staff, all the volunteers, and all the Observatory visitors have helped to make my internship one of the greatest, most challenging and most memorable experiences of my life. So to each and every one of you, THANK YOU! And an extra special Thank You to Stacey, Mike C., Steve, Jen, Sabrina and Deb, Thank you for enriching my internship and teaching me so much. There is no one else I would want to be hysterically laughing with around a dinner table!

Kristin Raisanen,  Summit Intern