Devon Verret
Blog Post #1
Greetings reader! My name is Devon Verret, and I am an undergraduate intern for the Women & Gender Studies department. At Loyola, I am majoring in philosophy with an emphasis on social justice, history, and women & gender studies. I am on the pre-law track and hope to practice criminal or medical malpractice law here in Chicago. I consider myself an activist and abolitionist and currently work for the Illinois Prison Project for their Women & Survivors campaign, where I help fight against racist practices, transphobic systems, regressive policies, and a carceral system that treats humans as disposable objects. Beyond activism, my other biggest hobby is plant care! I volunteer for the Garfield Park Conservatory and get to share my love for plants with people in the community.
As I enter the final stretch of my third year of university, I wanted to place some heavy building blocks on my resume. When Dr. Hemenway presented the opportunity to work in the WSGS office, I jumped on the occasion and thankfully passed the interview. I think this is an important “building block” for me because it provides me with not only a wide variety of networking opportunities but also leadership positions, course building, and a constant generation of feminist dialogue within the workplace. I can only hope to continue my passion for feminism and the influence of a queer-centered dialogue throughout my time as an intern because it is something I want to develop before going to law school next year.
It is crazy to me that three weeks have already flown by; I mean, can you believe it is already February?! This may be too soon, but I am already sad thinking about leaving the WSGS office when summer hits. Whatever will I do from 9:00-12:45 during the summertime? Comedy aside, I enjoy my time in the office, and I love the people I collaborate with and work with weekly. The internship has also allowed me to expand my network and mind. For example, during our screening of The Janes on February 1st, I got to introduce myself and ask questions to one of the women that made a significant impact during that era of unsafe abortions. It is only my third week, and I feel like I have accomplished many things. I am so excited to continue my internship journey!
Blog Post #2
Hello again readers! My name is Devon Verret, and I am a Women & Gender Studies Program intern here at Loyola University Chicago. Currently, I am a junior majoring in women and gender studies, philosophy, and history. It has officially been two months since I began this internship, and things have been going swimmingly. I still maintain the website and monitor its traffic, promote the Loyola University Women and Gender Studies alumni LinkedIn page, and occasionally lead the weekly meeting with the rest of the office. I hope this blog post uncovers the bits and pieces of how this internship has pushed my professional and personal development and how these developments have adjusted my goals for the internship.
Over the past eight weeks, I have achieved quite a bit. I have evolved into what I call a “STEMinist” because I have been learning the website management software, T4, and gaining confidence with the system every day. I have truly entered my woman-in-STEM era at the office, and I am feeling satisfied with the progress I have made on the website. I feel so confident that sometimes I think to myself, what if I was meant to be a computer science major? Guess we will never know! The first-semester meeting in the office happened in January, and I was so nervous! If I have learned anything from working in a feminist office space is that I am supported, and my voice matters. As a woman, as a queer woman, I often feel as if my input in a professional space is not valuable or worthy of attention. I am often left with the feeling of not feeling good enough or stupid. Especially in a male-dominated and discussion-based major like philosophy, I often feel this way. But as I go through my time in the office, I have found myself feeling open to sharing my thoughts and feeling enough confidence to change how I give input and communicate by not being apologetic for speaking. I think many women can relate too, especially in a professional space, because there is this underlying idea in our society that sharing how you feel or what you think as a woman is a privilege or gift and not a right.
But, as I write this blog, I feel dissatisfied. How much does writing down an argument on paper do for social justice on a blog for a university? Sure, I genuinely believe that women in a professional environment often devalue themselves because women are taught that their ability to use their voice and give their opinions is a privilege or retractable gift instead of a right, but what are we supposed to do with that? I have pondered this while sitting at stop lights or in the office and realized I need to attach an action to an argument by doing this myself. My goal for the next blog is not to be apologetic when speaking and encourage other women to feel confident in themselves. Working in a feminist office space is a unique experience I thought would have been like any other internship or job. However, the attachment of the word “feminist” to the office space is vital because it does differ from any other job I have done. I feel open in my queerness, gender, and especially my voice.
This is such a silly picture. It was taken where I usually sit in the office on February 24th by Rylie who is another intern. We were learning to make buttons to distribute and we were being silly. I encouraged us to make practice buttons supporting our campaign for world leader or student government leader. #confidenceiskey
Blog Post #3
Hello again readers! My name is Devon Verret, and I am an intern for the Loyola University Chicago Women and Gender Studies Program. We are nearing the end of the semester, and oh boy, has it just appeared. It does not feel like I have been here for over three weeks, let alone three months! I am so sad that I will not be in the WSGS office for much longer and will be very sad when I have to say goodbye. But, I am excited to have completed my internship and developed skills and work relationships that I hope to carry into my future career.
Personally, the relationships I have built through this internship have brought me the most joy. I never thought I would be excited to wake up at 7 am to get ready for work, but how can you not be excited when you get to work with some really amazing people? I get to watch and listen to a whole range of people who do incredible things. Jade is a killer graduate student that does incredible work at Misericordia. I always ask about the things they accomplish while they are there and their plans for the future. Sarah just randomly brought up how she gave a presentation at some conference she was invited to. But my favorite is when I stay longer and speak to Dr. Datskou. She will sit and talk to me about philosophy and queer theory for so long. I ask a ton of questions, and she always answers them and gives me new authors or book recommendations.
Educationally and career-wise, my confidence has gone up. I feel more able to speak openly and discuss things I usually would feel anxious about doing. Career-wise, I have just been more invigorated to do more work in women’s issues. Currently, I am working for the Illinois Prison Project in their Women and Survivors cohort and loving it. Nothing makes me feel more passionate than working directly with incarcerated women and fighting for their release and against their poor treatment. Working in the WSGS office has only encouraged that passion for social justice further because I am working in a feminist space that fosters that fight and lets me believe that I am capable of doing so.
Throughout the semester, there have been some incredible moments. A few highlights would be doing the New York Times dialect quiz and being amazed at how accurate the results were with everyone in the office. Another was when Rylie and I made buttons for the first time, and she ended up making one of my buttons designs a sticker which meant a lot to me. Rylie would make so much fun of me for panicking every Friday because I would forget to make coffee before our weekly meeting. Honestly, my favorite moments during the semester were our weekly Friday meetings. I enjoyed seeing everyone and hearing Betsy’s corner. It was a highlight of my Fridays.
I would suggest this internship to anyone, but I would also be extremely jealous of them because they now have the most fabulous job on campus. I often tell people to become women and gender studies majors or minors because it is so few classes, and it is so incredible to entrench yourself in feminist dialogues and spaces. It truly changes your entire perspective on the world. I feel so lucky to have had this opportunity and excited to continue coming into the office as I move throughout my senior year.
Rylie Vandermolen
Blog post #1
Hi everyone! My name is Rylie Vandermolen, and I am a junior at Loyola University Chicago. I am double majoring in Political Science and Women’s Studies/Gender Studies as well as minoring in psychology. After graduation I plan to attend law school; as a lawyer, I want to make use of the knowledge I gained through the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies program by helping advocate for marginalized groups of women within the legal system. My passion for feminism was fostered by my mom at a young age and continued to grow as I learned more about the injustices within society. When I began my undergraduate career at Loyola I was on the pre-med track, but after losing my mom to cancer my freshman year I realized life was far too short to spend it studying subjects that I was no longer passionate about or interested in. After changing my major, I found myself excited about school again and the classes I have taken in the WSGS program have only furthered my interest and passion for feminism.
When I heard about the internship opportunity within the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies department at Loyola during my class with Dr. Hemenway last semester I was instantly interested. I loved being in class with Dr. Hemenway and Sarah, the teaching assistant, so I jumped at the opportunity to be an intern in the office and work with them. Upon reaching out to Dr. Hemenway about the internship opportunity and learning what responsibilities I would have as an intern in the department’s office I was even more interested. My decision to pursue a WSGS internship was in part because of my passion for feminism and in part because I had a strong desire to see how the feminist theories that I’ve learned and discussed can be applied to a feminist workplace. In this role, I hope to learn how to effectively promote the WSGS social media, learn how to make interdisciplinary connections in order to promote the WSGS program, and develop professional relationships in a feminist setting. During the first three weeks of working as an intern in the department I have already learned so much! I have spent a good deal of time working with the department’s social media and brainstorming new, creative ways to increase traffic on our pages. Coming into this internship I was very unfamiliar with Mailchimp and Meta Business Suite, so I’ve learned a lot about navigating both of those resources. I really enjoy the social media aspect of my internship responsibilities because it allows me to be very creative. Making posts for our social media on Canva has been something I really look forward to and have a lot of fun doing!
My first impressions of the WSGS office have been amazing! I have never been so comfortable and at home in a workplace setting so quickly in my life. The environment of the office is so welcoming and supportive; I could not imagine being an intern anywhere else. The respect and empathy everyone in the office demonstrates towards one another is a really beautiful thing to witness and be a part of. From this experience, so far, I have come to realize that later in life I never want to work in a professional setting that does not emulate similar values and characteristics to the WSGS office. I look forward to everything that has yet to come with working in the WSGS office and getting to know my fellow office members better as the semester progresses!
Blog Post #2
Hi again! I’m Rylie Vandermolen and I’m a junior at Loyola double majoring in Political Science and Women’s Studies and Gender Studies. I’m currently working as an intern at the Women Studies and Gender Studies office here on campus. I just finished my seventh week working as an intern – my time working in the office is almost halfway over. Time this semester has flown by super fast!
For the past seven weeks, I have spent the majority of my time making social media posts on Canva, scheduling the content to be posted using Meta Business Suite, and working on the alumni newsletter. I’ve worked on advertising different events for the program (i.e., “The Janes” screening and our women’s history month sticker competition) both through posting flyers on campus and promoting the events on social media. Several weeks back, at the start of my internship, I took over the #FeministFigureFriday posts from Sarah and these past few weeks I’ve chosen the people who will be featured for #FeministFigureFriday in March and have started to write out the little biographies for each feminist featured on our social media. I’ve also spent a lot of time these past few weeks working on our alumni newsletter, so it was ready to be sent out on Tuesday, March 28th. All of the various work I’ve done for my internship these past seven weeks has allowed me to apply the understanding of various concepts I’ve learned in the WSGS classes I’ve taken like intersectionality, for example, which I try to include within the posts I create for the social media. When making an educational resource for social media or when working on the #FeministFigureFridays posts, I spend time doing research and through the process of researching and synthesizing information for the social media posts, a lot of the concepts I learned in WSGS classes are reinforced.
During my time interning in the WSGS office, I find myself developing social justice advocacy skills through the creation of social media posts, especially more educational resources. For example, during Black History Month, with the help of Sarah, I put together a “Black Authors” bookshelf through our Goodreads account which was promoted on our Instagram and Facebook accounts. For Valentine’s Day I put together a “Feminist Guide to Valentine’s Day” post and I put together a post that brings awareness to the different resources on campus (i.e., the LINE, the services provided by Students for Reproductive Justice, and an app by the Wellness Center called “Here For You”) that was posted on Valentine’s Day. These are just a few examples of how through the use of the program’s social media platforms, I’ve created and shared with the program’s followers really important information about social justice issues. The sharing of educational information and resources is a major component of the process of achieving social justice and the work I’ve done with the program’s social media, I feel, has contributed to the education of some which are more than I could ever ask for.
Blog Post #3
Hello again! In case anyone forgot, I’m Rylie Vandermolen and I’m currently working as an intern in the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies office! This is the thirteenth week of my internship and my final blog post. I truly cannot believe I am almost done with my internship; I am really going to miss my time in the office very much!
This internship has provided me with opportunities to advance useful professional skills like proficiency using Meta Business Suite and MailChimp. Before my internship I did not even know these tools existed, now I use both on a daily basis to fulfill my responsibilities in the WSGS office. The comfortability that I have gained using these tools will most definitely come in handy at internships I intend on pursuing in the future. Throughout these past thirteen weeks, I have grown very confident in my promotion of the program’s social media pages. My confidence grew with time, but also my supervisor and coworkers empowered me to be more confident in the ideas I had for the social media. I can see the skills I acquired through promoting and managing the program’s social media to be of use to me in both future career and activist endeavors. While I have gained very useful professional skills through this internship, I have undergone a lot of personal growth. From being more confident in my ideas and opinions to being more comfortable engaging in difficult and potentially uncomfortable conversations, interning in this office has been an experience I am so thankful for.
This internship has been a truly incredible experience and I have made some amazing memories. I don’t think I could pick out just one favorite moment from interning in the WSGS office; the environment of the office and the people in it have made every day in the office enjoyable. I have loved our casual office discussions about any and every topic under the sun and our often-silly icebreakers we do before our weekly meetings – truly every aspect of this internship has been amazing. If I had to pick just one favorite moment from the past thirteen weeks, I think it would have to be meeting and hearing what the guest speaker said after our showing of “The Janes” in Damen Cinema. Having the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts from someone that was working with the women in the Janes was very surreal, especially when considering the state of reproductive rights in the United States right now. Getting to meet and hear the wisdom of an activist was an inspiring moment that has really stuck with me. The Women’s Studies and Gender Studies program is amazing – from the professors, all of the interesting interdisciplinary classes, and the inclusive and diverse curriculum, I’m so thankful I decided to pursue this major. Anyone thinking about majoring or minoring in WSGS should do it! I promise you won’t regret it – I truly have found a home in this program and I know that the WSGS program will welcome any prospective majors or minors and make them feel at home. The WSGS community here at Loyola is truly the best community I’ve been a part of, and I think everyone deserves to find a community like that, so come major or minor in WSGS!!
Kinnady Jones
Blog Post #1
Hello, my name is Kinnady Jones and I am currently a Senior majoring in Women and Gender Studies and History. Besides working and going to school, my favorite things to do are baking, reading, and watching movies. I have been enjoying my time in both departments meeting with professors and getting experience for the classroom and in real life. I look forward to bringing what I have learned into the real world while also continuing to learn as well.
I have decided to do an internship because I personally want to do more for the community and myself. Some of the things I have wanted to accomplish are gaining leadership skills, more research skills, and overall gaining more confidence. Being a leader has always been something that I have had trouble with. I’ve never been a leader in anything that can help others. It always seems scary because being a leader (to me ) means having the courage to guide others and even give out ideas. Even if you’re unsure if things will turn out well for you and your peers. I believe that I have what it takes to be a good leader, but I’ve never put it to practice for myself and others. Even though I have been in school for a long time, I want to perfect my skills in research even more. When it comes to leadership and being more involved in the community and fighting for peace, I haven’t done much. This semester, I want to push myself out of my comfort zone and take on more physical roles in social justice. Also, I’ve been wanting to understand more about my local community’s politics because I’ve been noticing how politics affects us at even the local level.
This semester, I am interning at CodePink: Peace for Women in their #Divest from the War Machine campaign. This organization caught my eye because I found the work they have done to address issues of war around the world (such as Ukraine and Palestine . I like the consistent and peaceful approach to help end this country’s current investment in the military. And currently, I have been researching how much of it has caused harm to human beings in both the U.S. and across the entire planet. Since it’s remote, I was able to meet all of the staff and other interns through and communicate with them through slack and Gmail. I personally like having it remote because it helps me to make my schedule more flexible since I also work. And I like to have the option to attend certain events and protests if/when I want in order to experience more aspects of activism usually required. . It’s really positive seeing people from different backgrounds planning and wanting the same goal for peace! Everyone takes turns in both updating and giving ideas on how to achieve the end goal. Luckily there have been certain events that I have already attended thanks to the encouragement of my manager. I went to the Mayoral Forum for Chicago a couple weeks ago and I really enjoyed it! The candidates and everyone involved were calm and direct and were listening to the people and their concerns. I hope to experience something like this again!
Blog Post #2
Hello everyone! My name is Kinnady Jones and I am currently a senior double majoring in History and Women’s Studies and Gender Studies. I am also interning at CodePink: Peace for Women which is a feminist, anti-war organization where the main goal is to stop the manufacturing of weapons of war created by the United States government. So far, I have worked for 8 weeks (about 2 months), and it has been good for me so far. The main headquarters is in California, but all the staff work remotely. It is still remote unless me and some of the staff want to meet up to work on issues together in person. Also, if there are any protests or other events in person, I would be welcome to attend too.
For the past eight weeks, I have been keeping up with the current project that I have been assigned to work on, but I have been trying to push myself to do more in person events and taking notes while attending some meetings. If all things go well, I might attend a Summit that is happening in April at Loyola’s lakeshore campus. So that is going to be exciting! I think all the work I have been looking at through research has made me realize a few things. The first thing is that war hurts the marginalized individuals the most. Whether there is conflict within the United States or other countries there seems to be a pattern of poor people, minorities, queer individuals, etc., For some reason I have never considered that when talking about the politics or war in the United States and I did not realize how much money is unnecessarily spent (and earned) hurting and killing people who, for the majority, absolutely have not done anything to justify the damage and power in order to gain profit and control. I also did not understand how other governments inflicting the oppression matches their strategies with the U.S.’s strategy which showed how much the U. S. has influenced many countries to inflict violence on to others as well.
The knowledge I am currently gaining has helped me to understand how overlooked the anti-war movement is sometimes. Even though there are young people doing their part, I believe that a lot younger people (if many resources reached out to them) more people would become aware of what’s happening. I also believe that more citizens would not be as complacent as we as a nation tend to be when discussing the American military. As of recent I want to contribute more into going to public events as well. I do understand that being there also helps a lot. So far, I have attended the Chicago Mayoral Forum and I really enjoyed it!
Blog Post #3
Hello! My name is Kinnady Jones, and I am currently a senior double majoring in History and
Women’s Studies and Gender Studies. For this semester I have been interning at Code Pink’s: Peace for Women, a feminist anti-war organization, for the past four months.
For this internship, my main skills were to: improve my research skills, gain leadership roles, and have better communications with coworkers. I also added the skill to try to attend physical events whenver it was possible for me to. I wanted to learn more about activism through the anti-war movement for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that up until this internship, I have not been able to witness personally people around my age protesting different wars that have been happening around the world. Another reason was to push myself out of my comfort zone and to actually practice activism through research and pushing out information. My goal is to hopefully graduate by this semester and start working in either a library or a museum of sorts for at least a year because those are my favorite places to be. After that, I want to apply to graduate school and get a master’s in library science. As much as I have enjoyed this internship, my dream career is to be either an archivist or a librarian. And I think this internship has helped me because of the current situation of books being banned in different places. This internship has given me the courage to stand up for people being able to access certain materials and information that actually teaches people about our environment and how we can do better.
My favorite moments of the internship have been attending one of the Chicago Mayoral Forums and meeting local politicians. For some reason, I never thought of ever being able to do that and ask questions and to hear their plans for this city in person. And another one has been recently when I attended CAPA (Chicago Area Peace Action) event on Loyola’s lakeshore campus. I had to help the manager present the case for divestment using the research I have gathered so far. And at first, I was nervous. Public speaking is not my strong suit, so I was afraid to get something wrong. But just to make sure, I made flash cards and practiced a couple of times on my own to get the hang of it. And it turned out well! I was able to make points and I did not mess up like I thought I was going to. Besides the research, those two moments were my absolute favorite! To those who are hesitant to becoming a WSGS major, go for it! If you are passionate about learning about activism and how to treat people better as human beings, this one of the best majors to do so. It has not just taught me about feminism, activism or anything in between. This major has taught me that we as people should be able to call out our injustices and learn to treat each other as equals and to pass that on for the next generation.
Women's Studies/Gender Studies Internship 