By Shannon Brown
After four years of schoolwork, community service projects and other extracurricular activities, I graduated from Providence College in May 2009. While the vast majority of my friends, roommates, and peers headed home to wait out the economic crisis and attempt to find jobs, I packed my car the day after graduation, loaded down with both tank tops and sweatshirts, and prepared my four hour journey from Connecticut to Maine.
For the past four and a half months, I have had the distinct pleasure of acting as the AmeriCorps “Watershed Steward Intern” for the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed (“Friends”). As a Public and Community Service Studies major, I had an extensive background in public service and work with various non-profit organizations- throughout college, I always figured that I’d volunteer for AmeriCorps at some point in my life. I assumed that being an AmeriCorps volunteer would grant me a great experience and look great for on my resume, as well as offering the added bonus of reducing some of my student loans. Perhaps best of all (though not if you asked my mother) was the opportunity to live anywhere BUT Montville, Connecticut, my hometown. Basically, I was interested in meeting new people, working for a non-profit, and shouldering some good ol’ fashioned responsibility.
What I have gained in my more than four months of experience living and working in Augusta, Maine is more than I ever thought possible. I have met wonderfully kind people, have become well-acquainted with a beautiful area of the state, and most importantly, have learned a tremendous amount of important skills that I plan on taking with me. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been exposed to virtually all areas of a nonprofit organization. My experience working for the Friends gave me the opportunity to see the marketing of the organization, the networking used to accomplish goals, how to fundraise and appeal to donors. With the Friends, I was in charge of a staff of sixteen Courtesy Boat Inspectors, got to paint t-shirts with kids at local summer camps, and dressed up (more than once) as our mascot, Spotter the Otter. For all of my friends that returned home after graduation and attempted to find the first true “career” job out of college, I say to them- you missed out! If only everyone could have had as good of a time as I have had this summer in Maine, working for AmeriCorps and the Friends.
Best of all, though, the Friends has given me a future. When my term with AmeriCorps is completed on October 1, I have decided to stay in the Augusta area. I have made wonderful contacts with local community leaders, have found a fantastic place to live, and have been on job interviews for positions that I could see myself doing. The central Maine community in which I’ve been a part for the past four months has embraced me as a new friend, and I am sticking around to see this budding friendship into fruition. AmeriCorps is the perfect first step for life after college, and I have been blessed to have had such a wonderful opportunity.
Shannon Brown is an AmeriCorps members serving with Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed and a guest blogger.
