F.M. Kirby Experiential Learning Stipend Recipient Blogs

Week 6: Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

The title of this entry is a quote from Peter Drucker, an American management consultant whose work contributed to the modern philosophy of business corporations. I think this quote can say a lot about any company. You can’t truly know a business until you understand its culture, even if you know all objective facts about…

Week 5: Progress

On Friday, I will be half done with my summer internship. That’s pretty hard to believe. I feel like I have accomplished and learned so much already, but also nothing at all–like I just started this week. I have so much left to do in my short time remaining. My internship is advancing well. Through…

Week 8: Leadership and Self-Reflection

Week 8 was one of my tougher weeks at the internship but in reflection I learned more about leadership on the job as well as myself as a working professional. The first thing I learned about leadership is that you do not have to be “on the front line” to be a leader. This past…

Week 7: Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork

Hello all! I am back again to share some more information about VCS. This week I would like to go more in depth about our working environment here at VCS. At Vigiliant we take an agile approach to development which means that we divide up a task into parts and then put all of our…

Week 5: Making Progress

It’s hard to believe I’ve been an intern at Addison Whitney for a month now. The time is flying by and it’s a bittersweet feeling. I’ve learned so much in these short four weeks and am only looking forward to the next four! On the first day of my internship, I received a training manual…

Week 5: Getting the hang of it

This past week at Addison Whitney I continued to learn more about the verbal branding process. I practiced structural trademark screens for pharmaceutical names. I also continued using common sense trademark screens. The difference between the two is based on how you input the name into the screening program (SAEGIS). As you would expect, structural…

Week 7: Independent

Due to the organization structure and small size, most people work independently. Each person in the office is responsible for one area, such as Safety or Membership. Marketing and Communications is the exception — there are 5 people on that team, including me. But, the two managers who head the department focus on one or…

Week 4: The National Institutes of Health; the organization

Show of hands: how many of you knew about the NIH before you started reading this blog? Oh good, I’d hoped you would. The NIH is comprised of 27 institutes and centers (ICs), the largest of which is the National Cancer Institute (NCI). There are campuses in Maryland, North Carolina, Montana, Michigan, and Massachusetts. Annually,…

Week 6: Culture

Hello again! This week i’d like to elaborate more on Vigilant’s company culture. I noted in previous posts that Vigilant is a lifestyle company which provides a lot of flexibility. Us employees are allowed to make our own hours with he only conditions being that we be available for e-mail/phone calls from 1-5, work 40…

Week 7: Progress

This past week at the office, one of the victim’s advocates was out on vacation. Because of this, I was able to get more experience working as an advocate. On Tuesday, five people came to file a domestic violence protective order! Most showed up around the same time. While the two advocates met with clients,…