By Zoe Lenz

This summer was historic no matter what you decided to do with it. Grace McQuaid, a TPA senior, spent her summer interning at DriveTime, an American used car company based in Tempe. They sell and finance cars to customers around the nation.

 The application to this internship called for a resume and interview. “I wanted to apply because I love doing research and helping find solutions,” said Grace. “They normally only take on college students, but they allowed an exception for me, so I was the youngest there,” she continued.

The work Grace did included writing research papers and sitting in on meetings to provide feedback. She wrote a research paper about racial injustice’s involvement in different Arizona organizations. Grace even put together a scholarship program with the Garcia Family Foundation, or GFF. This foundation makes grants to other organizations and helps fund solutions to end homelessness with the Human Services Campus, resources for active duty Navy SEALS and their families, scholarships for ASU, help pay for healthcare for children, and help prevent homelessness with housing,

To benefit the program, she had to meet with other school-focused organizations. Grace presented the program in the form of a white paper, which is an authoritative report that concisely informs the reader about an issue and presents the issuing body’s philosophy.

Grace was able to use her TPA experience to help her. Socratic seminars helped her to express her opinions, and learning to write elegantly helped her write those papers quickly and easily. Through her internship with DriveTime, Grace turned this historic summer into a positive learning experience.