Monday, March 6, 2017

New Beginnings

Hello! My name is Kayla McComsey and I am so excited to publish this first post because this means it the beginning of my story with Temple’s ProRanger program and the National Park Service. I am currently a Freshman at Temple University studying Criminal Justice. I came into Temple University last fall as a Neuroscience major with the intention of going to medical school in order to become a medical examiner. Within about a month of classes I realized that it was no longer the path I wanted to take and I started to look for other opportunities. I had always been extremely interested in criminal justice and after a lot of thought I decided to switch my major.
The previous year my mom had assisted with the ProRanger preview day and she told me to check out the program. I never paid much attention to what she said until I stumbled across this blog one night. The more I read about all of the ProRanger’s unique experiences on their summer internships the more I realized how amazing the opportunity sounded. I was very nervous to apply because I did not know that much about the National Park Service. I decided to take the risk apply and I eventually got accepted to go to preview day. Once I was at preview day and got to talk one on one with both the past and present ProRangers I realized that this was exactly what I wanted to do with my future. I fell in love with the idea that I will get to mix criminal justice with the beauty of the national parks.
            I have always been drawn to living in a city which was one of the reasons I decided to move from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia.  Before joining the program whenever somebody said the word “national park”, I would picture a park deep in the wilderness, because those were always the types of parks I visited or read about. This was one of the reasons I hesitated in applying at first because I never saw myself as a super outdoorsy person. Don’t get me wrong I have done my fair share of hiking, and camping but I always pictured myself living in an urban environment. After researching more into the National Parks Service and realizing the variety of parks that are out there I realized there were so many places I could picture myself interning at and eventually working at.

Even though I will not be able to go on my internship this summer, do to the fact I am entering the program as a freshman, I really hope to gain as much knowledge about the National Park Service’s message and history. This way I can begin to educate my friends and family that were much like myself before I researched and joined the program.