• Mary Ann Lickteig ©️ Seven Days
• Nina Sablan with rowing coach Steve Hap Whelpley on Great Hosmer Pond, watching Olympic rower Jacob Plihal train in the rain — for 90 minutes!

My late father never approved of my college course of study. "Fourteenth-century Italian cinema" is how he summed up my major at Middlebury College, which in reality was French and Italian with a concentration in contemporary visual art. To an astrophysicist, the joke perfectly captured the impracticality of a liberal arts education. It didn't help that, as graduation approached, I applied for and got turned down for a job in Middlebury's then-Spanish-Italian department for the most humiliating reason: I failed the typing test.

In retrospect, it's clear that I would have benefited from some kind of internship. Back then, in the early 1980s, Middlebury didn't really offer them. Or I didn't know where to look. Post-graduation, I was lucky to find a full-time, yearlong one through the University of Vermont that set me on the career path that led to Seven Days.

• Cathy Resmer ©️ Seven Days
• Ben Conway tabling at Waterbury's Not Quite Independence Day celebration

Middlebury now facilitates real-world experiences for students across the U.S. Better yet, three years ago it created a summer internship program, MiddWorks for Vermont, that places 25 students in local enterprises that are working to improve this state, the one in which they are studying. You can spend four years in Vermont, in an ivory tower, and never really get to know the place. The greater hope is that some of these young adults will decide to stick around, as I — and many of my friends — did.

The crash course in Vermontia began upon arrival for our first-ever MiddWorks interns, Jack McGuire and Ben Conway, who spent eight weeks working at Seven Days this summer: Ben promoted our youth civics initiative, the Good Citizen Challenge, at far-flung events and venues. Jack wrote news stories about anything and everything we threw at him, from the July floods to an opioid lawsuit settlement. Jack dug into some lighter fare, too, including the Vermont butter referenced on the Hulu series "The Bear" and a Canada goose roundup at the Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area in Addison.

• Courtesy Of Natalee Kneeland
• Jack McGuire holding a goose at the Dead Creek roundup

He cranked out 17 good stories in two months. Frankly, he didn't seem to want to leave.

In addition to Jack and Ben, we had three reporter interns working on the culture side of the operation: Leah Krason, now a junior at Wellesley College; Nina Sablan, a sophomore at Swarthmore College; and Ian Dartley, who is finishing up his master's in journalism at Northeastern University. A sixth intern, Olivia White, now a senior studying graphic design at Tufts University, worked remotely building ads all summer.

Seven Days culture coeditor Carolyn Fox kept her trio of interns busy with assignments that sent them up and down the state. They reported on small towns; wrote listings for our Daysies magazine, All the Best; and collaborated on a group project exploring late-night food in Burlington.

• Courtesy
• Leah Krason

Whenever possible, we paired them with more experienced culture reporters. Nina went to Craftsbury in the pouring rain with Mary Ann Lickteig to watch Olympic rower Jacob Plihal*; Leah tagged along with food writer Melissa Pasanen on a reporting trip for the July 3 cover story on Vermont diners that Melissa cowrote with Jordan Barry. "They got to see reporters in the field, which helped them realize that it's not about asking questions from a list but, rather, to have a conversation with people," Carolyn noted.

After the pandemic, that's a skill many of us could stand to improve.

To their credit, all four reporting interns expressed a desire to work in person with coworkers in an office environment. Nothing beats the old-fashioned newsroom, where generations of journalists have learned the craft by watching and listening to their colleagues. Most of the interns said they also enjoyed being part of our editorial planning meetings, where story ideas get shaped into articles. For example: They got to see how a conversation about movie theaters in Vermont expanded into this week's cover story, "Reel Drama."

• Courtesy
• Ian Dartley

Ian's last piece is also in this paper — a surprisingly candid conversation with Academy Award-winning moviemaker Oliver Stone, a featured guest at the upcoming Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival. "While I worked in public relations in New York City for a year, I found it to be largely unfulfilling," Ian said. "Spending these months here, I felt I did some truly fulfilling work. It definitely gave me a sense of the type of community I'd thrive in, post-grad."

Ben, from MiddWorks, echoed Ian's sentiment. "I'm more likely to live in Vermont, especially Burlington, after I graduate. If only you guys could fix that darn housing crisis."

Correction, August 22, 2024: An earlier version of this story misstated the publishing date of "Order Up." It was published on July 3. Also, we incorrectly identified the rower Nina Sablan watched in Craftsbury. It was Jacob Plihal.