Hello! My name is Rushi Patel and I’m an 18 year old high school senior currently attending Elk Grove High School. My school district, Township High School District 214, has an amazing program that gives students opportunities to intern in whichever field they choose, in whatever time frame they decide. I’ve really wanted to get some real life experience in a traditional office workplace and thought it was a fantastic opportunity. Turns out, I was right! I am thrilled to be interning at JRS Mar/Com.
From the start of my time in high school, I’d known that my adult life would be dominated by technology. My parents had done everything they could to cultivate a love of technology into me, and it worked. I took every computer science course offered at my school and thoroughly enjoyed my time in them. I look fondly back to those days when I was in a CS course as I wasn’t able to take on during my senior year. So when I got the email that my internship at JRS Mar/Com was set up, I was very excited. It had been so long since I had done anything significant to further my education in a technological field.
Some things about me, my hobbies include video games, watching TV and a bit of light reading. I love to eat and you can generally find me eating out and trying new things wherever I am. I’ve also taken four years of Japanese and am fairly fluent in the Indian language of Gujarati.
Apart from academics, I have been in the Elk Grove High School Theater Tech Crew for four years. I’ve done lighting for several shows and constructed the set along with my crewmates. I also assisted in making sure the shows ran smoothly as a backstage-hand. I did that while also working a part time job at Elk Grove Classic Cinemas as Floor Staff. This means I was primarily ushering people in and out of theaters, cleaning up after our guests and selling concessions (we have the best popcorn!). So while I’m not completely new to the environment of a workplace, interning at JRS Mar/Com will certainly provide me with a new experience.
Under Joe’s guidance, I have worked on the Generation Now Political Action Committee, or GenNowPAC. GenNowPAC was created to help impact the local environment, increase voter registration and be a positive influence on the community as a whole. It was an incredible experience and challenge learning new tools and software to use in constructing the website and brainstorming in events and content to populate the site. I was even given the opportunity to post an editorial I wrote on the coal industry on the website to help kick off the blog!
As for after high school, I have already committed to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign coming this fall. There I hope to study Chemical Engineering and Computer Science at one of the best engineering schools in the country.
