By Will Newbegin
I first learned that I would spend seven weeks interning at the Children’s Eternal Rainforest in Monteverde, Costa Rica, on Wednesday, March 20th. At around 6 PM that night, I languidly scrolled through my email, discarding announcements from online retailers and university bulletins with mechanically-timed taps of the ‘delete’ key. I cleared and cleared my inbox until an uncharacteristically promising subject line appeared. “Summer Internship in Costa Rica,” it read.
With caution, I clicked open the new email. I winced, preparing for the possibility that I would once again find myself rejected from an internship opportunity. After all, it was only three months ago had I disbelievingly traced over each word of a similarly titled message; one that announced my rejection from an internship opportunity in Malaysia.
That rejection email came days before Lehigh University’s spring semester commenced, and rests on a page of my life’s story that I’ve dog-eared, retrospectively. I had banked on interning in Malaysia thanks to application essays and interviews in which I felt supremely confident. The offer to work abroad would have easily offset many of the anxieties amassed from the previous semester, my worst collegiate semester to date. But, struggles to pick a major and poor grades be damned. I was going to Malaysia, I insisted.
Wrong. The cold, sobering rejection email arrived in January. It did not change, no matter how many times I refreshed my inbox or re-read the message. I had, for all intents and purposes, reached the lowest point of my collegiate experience at that point. To make matters worse, I stood less than two weeks from a semester loaded with 20 credits and an eager helping of extracurricular responsibility. When others could then look toward a summer of international nirvana and self-discovery, I had nothing.
I had to change that. I pored through every summer job posting–domestic and international–that I could find. None seemed right, but I applied anyways. Desperately searching to no avail, I began to resign myself to another summer of working at home once more.
It was my mother who first directed me to Costa Rica, as her screenshot of the job snippet seized my interest from the moment it hit my phone. Learning more about the Children’s Eternal Rainforest only confirmed that interest. Their mission was profound, and their impact was doubly so. To work with the Children’s Eternal Rainforest would not only align with my recently-declared course of undergraduate study (Science and Environmental Writing), but it would lend a legitimate chance to fight the global climate crisis as well. I applied immediately.
Agonizing weeks passed. I pestered the program’s director with several emails and visits in the interim, anticipating the decision with the patience of a hungry toddler. Then, in the twilight hours of that Wednesday, March 20th, the email came.
“You have been accepted to the summer internship program in Costa Rica,” it read. I burst into laughter with joy.
It’s now been three months and 14 days since then (as of July 4th). In that time, I’ve rediscovered academic success, tacked on some long-term career goals, and said goodbye to the 30-minute proximity in which I’ve lived for 20 years for the verdant, green mountains of Monteverde, Costa Rica. Here, I now feel at-home working in the Bosque Eterno de los Niños, as I now know it. I’ve heard the metallic clank of the bell-bird, stared straight through the crystal wings of the glasswing butterfly, and while I have yet to see a sloth, I’m sure I won’t have to run after it if I spot one.
I’m extremely grateful for the privilege of working with Director Lindsay Stallcup and her dedicated crew that keeps intact 23,000 hectares of untouched land for five percent of the world’s birds, three percent of the world’s butterflies, and one lucky college student who gets to stay and hang with them for a bit.
It’s gonna be a fun few weeks here.
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Will Newbegin is a student at Lehigh Univeristy and is completing an internship with the Monteverde Conservation League from June to August 2019. This is the second in a series of guest blogs written by our interns. Edited by Lindsay Stallcup.