Authors: Miguel, Erika, Trinity, and Desteny

Information Technology Academy (ITA) is a pre-college program focused on high school students in the Madison area, but it also has sites in Lac Du Flambeau and Oneida. Students apply to get into the program when they are in 8th grade. The application process takes a couple months; you go through interviews and in the application, an essay and letter of recommendation is required. In the summer, all the students from all grade levels have to attend a specific camp for their grade; all the students go through the same camp as they proceed through high school. In the first summer camp, as rising freshmen, students get introduced to programs that are installed on the computers, such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. As rising sophomores, the students attend a video camp. During this camp, they have to create and edit several video projects with a group of 4 to 5 other ITA students and an instructor. As rising juniors, the students are required to work in an internship, or two, for a few weeks of the summer. As a rising senior, the students go through the Senior Residential Experience. During this time, they stay on campus for a week. During the school year, the ITA students are required to attend the Saturday sessions on campus at the Computer Science building. Here, they learn technology skills, study skills and ACT Prep. By the end of their senior year, students have spent a total of seventy-two Saturday sessions on campus. At the end of the program, if students are accepted to UW Madison, they are able to get a full ride scholarship for 4 years.

We, the interns for the WSUM Radio Station, are here from part of the Information Technology Academy (ITA). As part of our 4 year journey through the program, we need to complete an internship for 3 weeks during the summer before our junior year, which they provide. The internships are all related to technology in some way from Cybersecurity to Video Production, and Graphic Design. The WSUM Radio Station Assistant position was all our first choice as interns. We all chose to work here because we all enjoyed creating podcasts during our Sound Design unit in the fall semester of our sophomore year, which seemed to be a useful skill in a radio station. We also enjoyed acquiring several other skills like making beats through Ableton, and editing sound using Adobe Audition.

Howdy, I'm Miguel and I'm a rising freshman in koolege at MATC and a rising junior in high school at La Follette High school. The experience I have is working with ITA in a sound design unit for a whole semester and somewhat touched on using Adobe Audition. Some of my interests are music, soccer, and video games. Some of my favorite artists are A Tribe Called Quest, Playboi Carti, A$AP Rocky and Childish Gambino. I've been playing soccer for a while, so it is something that has been with me for most of my life. The video games that I play are either shooters like Rainbow Six Siege or fighting games like Super Smash Bros Ultimate. At WSUM I'm looking forward to gaining experience to maybe work at a station in the future, work with programs like Adobe Audition and enjoy this internship as much as possible.

Hey, my name is Erika and I am a rising junior at Memorial High School. I enjoy spending time with friends and listening to music. This internship intrigued me because 

of the things they do such as talk shows and play music. Going into the internship, I had no prior experience with radio station work. However, I was already somewhat familiar with some of the concepts that come up at the station because of what I learned at ITA about sound design. As for goals and what I'm looking forward to at WSUM, I would have to say that I am looking forward to hopefully going on air. I feel that the experience would be fun since it's something out of my comfort zone. I also hope to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes at a radio station and develop a deeper understanding of how to use certain equipment in the studio.

Hello, my name is Trinity and I am a rising junior at East High School. A few fun facts about me are that I love goats, conspiracy theories, and I really enjoy doing competitive cheerleading. Something I'm looking forward to here at WSUM is learning more about what radio is all about, more than just the music part. Although, the music aspect does intrigue me as well. I enjoy a wide range of music from various artists of different genres from Demi Lovato to Christian Nodal to Eminem. I am excited to get more practice with interviews and maybe go on air. A goal I have for myself in this internship is to learn more about how radio functions in general and gain more confidence in work like this. I don't really have any past experience in radio, so this is all new information for me and I'm looking forward to continue learning more.

Hi, my name is Desteny. I am a rising junior at East High School. Some of my interests include playing soccer, going on runs every night, dancing to Latin music, especially Merengue and Cumbia, and listening to a wide range of music genres, from 50s love songs by Paul Anka, to modern rap by Cardi B to Banda by Banda MS. I do not have any past experience in a radio show.

Honestly, the WSUM Radio Assistant was my first choice for internships, it just seemed to fit with my personality, plus I love That 70s Show, and it reminded me of how Donna was a radio show assistant for ‘“The Sound”, and she was “Hot Donna”. I am really looking forward to going on air and seeing the behind the scenes of such a successful local radio station, and being able to exercise my creativity in the workplace, since school is usually a place where I cannot do that.  My primary goal for this internship is to learn more about how to prepare and execute a good interview and how to handle a talk show, because in the future, I want to go into Political Science or Law, which are both fields that require to know these skills. Also, although I am part of ITA, I am not fascinated by technology, but the sound is the one area of technology that interests me.