Alumni Diaries #7 : Jacob Young

Hear from Jacob about his growth in taking on new roles in his internship, and how that led to a job opportunity at his host site!

Hi, my name is Jacob, and I was an operations intern at The Croft School during my time at Semester in the City. Croft offers preschool through third grade and currently plans to expand by one grade level each year until they have classes up through sixth grade. Croft’s magic happens because of a committed staff and community whose strengths are shared with everyone to create an accommodating environment centered around the students. When I walked into the Croft building, this environment immediately made me fall in love with the school. As an operations intern, my duties were to help keep the place running. That meant changing paper towels in the bathrooms some days and dealing with a flood of water coming out of the drains on another (it only happened once thank goodness). Outside of my bathroom experience (it built character), I was making shelves and planning my special project which was an event called the Harvest Festival. However, my role within the school quickly became more student-focused because many classrooms needed support.

In a small, new school, the intern who has never worked with kids before had his hands full doing classroom support A LOT more. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Even though I was leaving work exhausted, I was reinvigorated every day by the smiling faces of the kids greeting me at the door. On top of that, my needs were being met by my mentor and other staff were giving me as much advice as they could offer. My new role challenged me, but I had a fantastic support structure.

As the stress from completing my special project died down and the classes at SITC were wrapping up, I was happy to be finishing my time at Croft and in Boston. And then, one Monday morning on the bus I saw an instagram post on the Croft page that listed the new jobs they were hiring for the spring semester. All the way at the bottom I found a position that said “extended day chess teacher”. A new spark went through me. Immediately I pictured myself a few weeks later back at Croft teaching the kids chess, a game that I picked up during quarantine and grew a strong appreciation for. I ran to the principal as soon as I got to the school for one of my last shifts and told him I was interested in applying for the job. Because of my internship and the connection I made with him and the founder of the school, I was sort of offered the job on the spot. I say sort of only because I had to create a document outlining the class to prove that I am capable of doing this, but once I sent that in and found the time in my busy schedule as a last semester senior to come down to Boston to teach chess for a couple hours, I was all set to start in January. 

Now, I am working a borderline dream job that combines so many of my skills and passions together at a school that really cares about their students and staff (not to mention the pay is pretty fine as well if you ask me!). All of this would have never happened if it wasn’t for Semester in the City. This was certainly an experience where I got out of it what I put into it!