Lydia Bryant

KINS 4306
Dr. Kaninjing
4/17/2023
Reflection Paper

1. Introduction: My name is Lydia Bryant, and for my capstone internship, I chose to work

at Camp Kudzu. Camp Kudzu is a non-profit organization that was created to serve the

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) community in Georgia. The history of Camp Kudzu began in

1999, when a group of parents sat around a kitchen table and decided to create a summer

camp for their children to attend. The reason for this was because they all had a child

with T1D and couldn’t find any summer camps willing to accept their children. The

inaugural camp session was primarily focused on children and teenagers with T1D, but in

the years since then Camp Kudzu’s goals and audience have expanded. The

organization’s official goal is “to educate, empower, and inspire children, teens, and their

families living with type 1 diabetes (T1D).” This is because while those who have T1D

are still Camp Kudzu’s primary focus, the people working here (myself included) know

that T1D is something that affects more than just the person who has it. In fact, that is one

way Camp Kudzu recruits its volunteers.

There are two groups of people who work for Camp Kudzu: the full-time staff and

the volunteers. There are nine people who work full-time at Camp Kudzu, and their job is

to keep things running smoothly all year and make sure that camp programs can happen.

The volunteers are, as the name suggests, people who volunteer at the various camp

sessions in a variety of roles. These roles are divided into groups including camp

counselors, medical staff (clinicians, the endocrinologist, etc.), and logistics.

2. Description of Experiences: My official title at Camp Kudzu is “Programs Intern”. I

work directly under Anna Rambo, Camp Kudzu’s Director of Programs, and the nametag

I wear at camp even has “Programs Intern” on it. In practice, this translated to my role

being an extra set of hands. I did whatever Anna or any of the other staff needed me to

do. This entailed everything from organizing and labeling bags to accessing campers’

private medical information. I want to make it clear that no matter how tedious some of

my tasks were, I never felt like what I was doing wasn’t important. As I’ve stated, Camp

Kudzu is a non-profit—we rely exclusively on donations and grants to keep operating—

and when I first started my internship there were only six full-time staff. As I write this,

there are nine staff and two additional interns, so the workload and preparations for camp

sessions can be split between more people, but that obviously wasn’t the case when I

started. As a result, I know it made a huge difference and helped immensely when Anna

could have me complete a task that needed doing while she was in a meeting with the rest

of the staff, the board of directors, or someone else.

I think the parts of my internship that I have found to be the best so far have been

the Teen Retreat and Junior Retreat weekend sessions, because they have given me an

opportunity to actually experience what Camp Kudzu is like for myself. In doing so, I am

able to see how much of a positive impact Camp Kudzu has on its campers. When I

participated in Teen Retreat back in February, it was the first time I was able to interact

with the campers—the individuals Camp Kudzu had been created to serve—and I was so

touched when I heard them talk about how Camp Kudzu is their happy place, and that it

means the world to them, and how they’ve made lifelong bonds there. It made me decide
 there and then that I wanted to come back and volunteer again, even after my internship

is over.

I think that for me, the most challenging aspect of my internship was adjusting

from an academic environment to a work one. I had a lot of flexibility with my deadlines,

and that was a concept that I struggled to wrap my head around in the beginning because

it is so antithetical to college. It was easier when I was given one task at a time, but there

were times when Anna would email me essentially saying “here’s a list of things to do for

today, do them whenever you like, however you like, and if you don’t finish today that’s

fine!” This level of freedom in my schedule absolutely terrified me because I’d never had

it before, so it took several weeks for me to get comfortable with.

3. Perception and Evaluation of the Internship: My internship did not meet my initial

expectations at all, and I mean that in the best way possible! Before starting my

internship, I had some experience with Camp Kudzu as an organization, but all of that

was from a client’s perspective, as my younger brother has T1D. Additionally, I had

never had any sort of internship before in my life, so the only references I had to go on

were the orientation from Community Health last semester, and other advice some of my

professors gave about internships and jobs. The majority of this could be boiled down to

professionalism: look professional, act professional, be professional. Then I got on a

Zoom call with Anna before my internship officially started to get the finer details of my

first week sorted out, and found out Camp Kudzu doesn’t even have a dress code.

That’s not to say Anna or any of the other staff are incompetent idiots—far from

it. After all, we deal with confidential medical information every day and have half a
 million dollars’ worth of diabetes supplies stored in the medical storage room. It’s just

that Camp Kudzu is a camp organization, and there is a certain “vibe” that goes with that.

Anna is a fantastic supervisor. She is always happy (and prompt) to answer any

and all questions I have about anything. She was fantastic about teaching me how things

worked, and whenever she’d give me a task, she went through the trouble of typing and

printing out instructions for me to refer to. I would definitely recommend Camp Kudzu as

a potential internship site to future students. It’s a great environment, the staff are really

friendly, there’s no dress code, and with the various camp sessions and other events it’s

easy to get all 480 hours without having to work long hours every day.

4. Internship Preparedness: I believe that I was as academically prepared as I could be, all

things considered. During my time in GCSU’s School of Health and Human

Performance, I was extremely fortunate to be able to take courses with professors who

understood the importance and practicality of hands-on experience. In particular, I found

that my Methods of Health Promotion, Community Health, Health Promotion Program

Planning, Epidemiology, Research Methods and Statistics, and Environmental Health

courses prepared me the best for my internship. Getting even more specific, Dr. Jerriel’s

information on non-profits and the assignments that Dr. Kaninjing required us to use

Canva for were probably what I personally found the most useful.

As I said, I was as prepared as I could be, and I’m quite happy with how well I

was able to make use of the classroom knowledge I acquired. I know that a major reason

for having us complete these internships in the first place is because nothing replaces

actual, hands-on experience in the real world, no matter how well taught the coursework

is. However, a common theme shared by each of the classes I listed above is that the
 professors who taught them all agree with that sentiment, and thus structured their

courses so that their students would get the most out of them going into the real world.

This mindset is one that I think is absolutely essential to succeeding, especially in a major

like public health, where so many field and disciplines overlap and lateral thinking is key

to success. I believe that structuring major-specific courses this way where possible will

really help students in this major go far.

5. Internship Performance: One skill I’ve acquired—and that I certainly wasn’t expecting

to—was the ability to use Canva with ease. I remember how difficult it was for me to use

it, all the way back during the Community Health midterm assignment. That was literally

the first time I had ever used Canva, and I hated it, because it gave me so much trouble.

Now I use it for almost every project I do on my computer, and it’s almost surreal to

think I had so much trouble with it before.

I think my other biggest improvement was in working from home. In the post

covid-19 world we live in, Camp Kudzu, like many other businesses and organizations,

has a hybrid virtual/in office work schedule. That meant there would be days when I

wouldn’t go into the office, but I still had to get up early, get ready, and get my work

done. After all, If I’m given an email with a list of things to do, the expectation is that I’ll

get them done. While it’s true that there’s no one constantly looking over my shoulder to

make sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to when I’m working from the house, it doesn’t

change the fact that I have stuff that needs to get done. It also doesn’t mean that Anna is

magically incapable of noticing if I’ve done what I was supposed to or if I lied about it; if

I tell her something’s done and it’s not, she’ll notice. I think that my being more used to

how time management and responsibility work at actual jobs will really help mean once I
 graduate, because I really struggled with it initially, even though this is the way many job

environments are.

6. Personal/Professional Insights/Benefits: Working at Camp Kudzu has made me look at

Type 1 Diabetes completely differently in some ways, and I say that as someone who has

been around it my for the majority of my life. When I was much younger, maybe seven

years old or so, my little brother was diagnosed with T1D. It altered the course of my

family’s lives, totally and irrevocably. Given that my brother and I were both so young

when he was diagnosed, our parents were the ones who took care of him. Despite that, I

still learned a lot about T1D and can say with confidence that I know more about it than

the average person does. It’s simply a side effect of being in proximity to T1D for almost

two decades.

So believe me when I say that working at Camp Kudzu provides insights into

T1D. There were so many little things that made me realize the gaps in my knowledge:

before my internship I could confidently and correctly explain the difference between

type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes to a total stranger, but wouldn’t have known that

insulin comes in both short and long acting form, or that there are so many different

brands! And I’ve watched my brother get his blood sugar taken with a fingerstick so

many times that I could take anyone’s with my eyes closed, but I knew barely anything

about constant glucose monitoring (CGM) equipment before working at Camp Kudzu. I

also didn’t know how, because of the technology getting better and better, there’s a

problem with newer campers being hesitant to take blood sugars with a fingerstick.

I’ve grown up around T1D and epilepsy my entire life, and while that has come

with plenty of downsides, one of the things I see as an upside is the fact that I can use my
experience and familiarity with both of them to help other people, since there aren’t many

people who are in a position like mine. I still plan to do that. I have been fortunate

enough to grow up living a privileged life, and I want to give back in some way. But if

there is one insight I have gained from this internship, anything at all, it’s that I still have

a lot to learn. And that’s fine with me.