My Summer Internship

Hey, my name is Nghia. I am 15 and a sophomore in high school. I didn't know what I was getting into when I was applying for this job. This was my first job and I was quite scared for the interview. Days before the interview I wrote down all the questions that they were going to ask me, put my answers down and practiced them for a few hours. I wanted to be ready for the interview. The day of the interview I was pretty nervous. I went into the Zoom call very early just because I liked being early. After all that I was hired, luckily. 

So what do I do here? It's just like school, way more fun and you are getting paid for doing it.

So far I learned a lot about what it is supposed to look like when you are talking to an audience and how it should look like when you are listening to a presentation. And personally most importantly how to make your own business. I learned a lot about what the steps are to make your own business. Well, to be honest, the reason why I got into CHOOSE 180 is because of Demitrus he told me about this job, and at first I was hesitant I was kinda scared because it was my first job, and felt like I wasn't ready but after researching what CHOOSE 180 is I found out this could fun and I did use to think about like careers and making my own business was one of them. So I joined CHOOSE 180 because I wanted to learn how to make my own business and for the money. 

I think young people should join because it is an amazing opportunity. And it lets young people do something else than just sit at home and scroll on their phones. And I found amazing people. I made a few friends while being here.

What are my main takeaways from the program so far? Yes, it does get challenging sitting here and listening to people but a lot of it is very fun. The field trips are really fun and making new friends and just hanging out with this amazing community is very fun. My business idea is a volleyball club. My business name is Nghia Volleyball Academy.  What helped me find out what kind of business I wanted to do was thinking about what I love to do in life and that was volleyball but then I had to think about what a problem in the volleyball community I could fix with my company and that was the division of male and females in sports. Volleyball had a big thing that was volleyball was only a girl sport and not a male sport. So my mission statement is: I want to eliminate gender barriers in sports by empowering all youth to participate in my volleyball camp.

It was very fun thinking of what business to do and the different ideas I could think of. My business personally was very hard to do because my business was different from everyone else. Everyone was doing clothes and reselling or cutting hair. But the number one reason that I could get over the challenges I had while making my own business was because of the people around me I felt like I was in a place where I felt comfortable and safe to ask for help in school or anywhere I noticed a lot of kids think asking for help is not okay but I felt like I could ask for help at anytime so I was very grateful for that and it helped me. 

I have no regrets about joining CHOOSE 180 and 100% recommend youth to join. It is very fun and a very amazing opportunity.

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Learn more about our Summer Internship here!