November 2023 Intern Insights: Bethany Hansel
Bethany Hansel
Bethany Hansel is one of MAAV’s community engagement interns who is completing her undergraduate degrees in International Public Policy and Arabic at Virginia Tech this December. Here she shares her reflections on her experiences working with MAAV.
With only about seven months left in my undergraduate career, I experienced in May 2023 the creeping panic that many college students experience when they realize they will soon be forced out into the “real world” with (what many of us worry are) no discernible skills or experiences that will help us land a decent job. After weeks of perusing job board sites, I applied to be an intern with Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia (MAAV), a project that immediately intrigued me despite my admittedly little understanding of what I would be doing. Today, as I am four weeks away from graduating and am about to complete my seven-month tenure as a MAAV intern, I would like to pay homage to the ending of not just my internship, but my time as a resident of Appalachian Virginia.
I think it’s easy for a lot of students to become lost in the university bubble and go the entirety of their four(ish) college years without ever getting to know the broader community they live in. As students, we tend to forget that when we move into a college town, we often move into a pre-existing community, with layers of dense history and lives that extend far beyond the university we find ourselves cloistered in. While I don’t want to speak for others or generalize these sentiments, I have observed in myself and several of my friends a tendency to view college as a transitory phenomenon that seemingly exempts us from immersing ourselves in the realities just beyond our bubble. Many of us thus fail to take time to explore the local landscapes, to visit historical or cultural landmarks, or to even talk to many non-university-affiliated community members. Especially in the International Studies department I study within, we are trained to constantly think about other places we’ve never been to, other communities we’ve never spoken with, and other issues that have never touched us. This continual focus on externalities often precludes us from looking around and thinking about the place we currently exist in, speaking to the communities currently present all around us, and engaging with the issues currently affecting us. I think this is often one of the great tragedies of being in the university bubble, and it pains me to think that, had I not replied to that random internship advertisement in May, I would have left Blacksburg without any profound depth of knowledge on the history and cultures of the region I had spent the last three years of my life in.
Like many places on the planet, Appalachian Virginia has an often tragic and difficult history interwoven within the incredibly diverse array of cultures and communities in the region. Many of these stories would have remained invisible to me had I not been offered so many opportunities through MAAV to converse with community members and learn from them. Similarly, I know that many of these stories may continue to remain invisible to many others without the tireless work of local artists, activists, and scholars, some of whom I have had the privilege of working with directly through MAAV. I am so excited to see how MAAV’s funded monuments impact and make visible this myriad of beautiful local communities and their range of unique stories. I sincerely hope that, like me, the Appalachian and Virginia Tech community will be inspired by MAAV to share their own untold stories, to confront stories that have been silenced, and to take the time to actively see, hear, and understand their neighbors with the clarity and empathy each of us deserve.
Working with MAAV has been meaningful, fun, and important to me for a wide range of reasons. Each one of my colleagues has inspired me with their unparalleled dedication and passion for what they do, and the incredibly friendly, supportive, and inclusive environment they have fostered left me walking away from every experience with them feeling lighter. Being constantly inundated in my daily academic life with the perils of the world and the pressures to analytically try and solve every massive global problem has frequently left me overwhelmed with the immensity of problems I will never feasibly be able to fix. Working with MAAV has helped me remember that some of the most meaningful things we can do with our lives revolve simply around being present and open, giving others permission to take up all the space they need, and listening to each other fully and without judgment or expectation. While I did gain invaluable resume-building experiences and skills in this internship, I think there are much more significant lessons that I will be taking forward with me after graduation. While there is currently a big looming question mark over my head regarding where in the world I will be next year and what on earth I will be doing, I am carrying forth the reminder that I can find home and community anywhere I go, so long as I do not allow myself to get swallowed into any single bubble that threatens to segregate me from the land I walk on and the faces I pass. I am carrying forth the reminder to keep art, joy, creativity, openness, and meaning at the forefront of any work I do. I am incredibly grateful that MAAV has given these lessons to me, and I can’t wait to put these into practice in my forthcoming journeys. I will forever cherish my time living amongst the breathtakingly beautiful Appalachian mountains and communities, and I am so glad that interning with MAAV helped me appreciate and learn so much about this region during my short time here.
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