Ten weeks ago, at the start of their internship, George, Rob, Eric, Nick H., Nick B., and Tariq moved into room 10 of our dorm style living facility. At the end of their first week here, they met with their supervisors and myself individually, as we do with all of our interns. We like to give them a chance to voice questions and concerns and to allow us the opportunity to let them know how they are progressing. One of the questions I always ask is "Do you have any questions, complaints or concerns?" Usually, they respond with "no", but from time to time they have minor suggestions.

This time, however, three of them responded by saying something along the lines of, "not really, but it would be nice if we had lights in our bathroom and bedroom and a working outlet so we can plug in our phones and computers." They all followed this up by saying, "if it's not possible it would be okay, but it would be nice."

I of course asked the next most obvious question: if they had mentioned this problem to our fabulous lodge manager, Carolyn. They all said, "No, I assumed someone else had." I remember this so fondly because so I often I find myself answering the same complaint from multiple people, and lots of complaints in general, but these young men were so willing and ready to roll with things that they took little issue with what, in my eyes, was a significant inconvenience.

They spend the rest of the summer impressing me in similar ways. Their willingness to help in any way possible has been instrumental in the completion of our new fence and my ability to keep sane this summer. While all of our interns this summer have done an amazing job, have been very helpful, and have impacted me in different ways, this group was exceptionally low maintenence. For this reason, I would like to send out a special thanks to them.

Good luck next year, guys, and in all your future endeavors! Your attitude and willingness to help will be one of you biggest assets and will be missed and remembered by all the PVS staff.

(FYI: It turns out that the lighting outlets in their room did work because they had accidentally not been turned on when the building was reopened for summer. The problem was fixed within minutes of its discovery.)