Final Getty Marrow Intern Blog Post – JD Davillier

Hello again, it’s JD (Craft in America’s Getty Marrow Undergraduate Intern). Unfortunately, though, this one will be my last post here. The classic line in situations like this is to be shocked at how fast it went by. I won’t break that tradition today; I really do feel like I was just writing my midpoint post. Still, when I think back to everything I’ve done at this position so far, it takes a while. I’ve done and learned a lot over this summer both in and out of work, and the fact that I need more than a few minutes to run through everything in my head is proof of that.
So, obviously I can’t summarize this whole experience in a blog post, but I will share some highlights and hopefully some insight from the past few weeks. One such highlight is working on diagrams for the various woodworking joints featured on the Craft Video Dictionary website, something I’m very glad I was asked to do. I didn’t expect to enjoy making those diagrams as much as I did, but it was so satisfying to engage with the joints I had been watching videos of for weeks in that way. Finding the best way to present those images was a motivating challenge, and that experience was so valuable for me to see how rewarding it could be to engage with that work in a professional capacity. I won’t list everything I’ve worked on because it would take too long, but I truly feel like I was able to learn something from every project, which is not something to take for granted.
Beyond professional development, I appreciated the community and people I met greatly. Whether it be fellow Getty interns, visitors to the center, or the staff at Craft in America and Freehand, it truly was a pleasure to meet everyone and gain those new perspectives. It was great to meet artists and be inspired by them, but it was just as valuable to meet art appreciators and people who work for art-focused organizations. The art world is complex and varied, and the understanding you gain from directly interacting with people in it cannot be replicated. Beyond insight into potential paths for my future career, meeting a variety of people has helped me become a more well-rounded person with a deeper understanding of the world, and that, too, is not something I will take for granted.
That understanding is something that should be thought about more with opportunities like these in general. There is a lot of pressure in our world to go to school and get an internship as ways to ensure your future career. A future career is certainly important, but it’s also crucial that degrees and internship experience have meaning in terms of development and not just because of their title. That’s why a large part of what I loved about this internship was being exposed to so many different situations and pushing myself to come up with solutions for them. My goal with experiences like these, and everything really, is always to grow in ways that can’t just be put on a resume. Those statistics do matter, but there’s so much to life that you miss out on if you let them define you. Being happy with the person you grow to become is a big deal because it affects you in all aspects of your life rather than just one. I hope that I and others can continue to remember that.
I’m so grateful that I had an internship where it was easy to make the most out of it in that way, for both my personal and professional development. Thank you so much to Craft in America, the Getty, and everyone else I’ve met and interacted with who shared experiences with me. And of course, thank you to anyone who is reading this, and I hope you got something out of it!

Best wishes,
JD