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.
