Hi everyone! My name is Alexandria Rhoads and I’m a Student Farm intern for the 2023 growing season. I’m a freshman majoring in aerospace engineering, and I’m really excited to broaden my horizons with this internship.
For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the world around me. I spent a majority of my childhood outdoors examining the trees, flowers, and any other plant I could get my hands on. For a long time, this was just a fun hobby of mine, but about five years ago my dad suggested that we create a garden in our backyard. I instantly got excited about the idea of growing my very own vegetables and insisted that we go through with the garden. In the past few years, I’ve grown tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, cucumbers, zucchini, asparagus, and bell peppers, and I’m looking forward to growing a lot more in the future.
However, as I started to become more involved in our backyard garden, I began to think more about how we get the food that we eat. Beyond just how we get food, though, I became very interested in the way that food was grown and people’s ability to get fresh food on their tables. I had started to realize that there was a lot of injustice within food systems, and I wanted to figure out what could be done to help people affected by this issue. This passion for helping people facing injustice, combined with my love of plants, is what led me to the internship at the Student Farm. The Student Farm helps to mitigate food inequalities in the State College community by providing the opportunity for community members to receive fresh, locally grown produce. This and all of the other ways that the Student Farm serves the State College community inspires me and has drawn me to being an intern.
The Student Farm establishes a sense of community through education, and that is another thing that made me decide to become a Student Farm intern. Although I’m majoring in aerospace engineering, I am still very passionate about sustainable agriculture and I want to explore that passion. I may not plan on working in a farm setting when I graduate, but I intend to do everything I can to learn as much as possible about sustainable growing while I’m here. While I could get this education in a classroom environment through the myriad of classes that Penn State offers, I believe hands-on experience is the most valuable part of this type of education – and that’s exactly what I will be gaining through this internship. Through this internship, I hope to learn more about growing food sustainably and how to foster community involvement within the food production process. These are things that only the Student Farm can teach me.