By Shantika Bhat, VRG Intern

In the midst of the pandemic and isolation, I was looking for something new to dive into. I was applying for scholarships, stumbled upon The Vegetarian Resource Group, and was offered the opportunity to be an intern. I was excited to try something new and develop new networking connections. I also had many goals in my mind including learning to write better, which I knew I could accomplish by interning. I am extremely thankful for my time at The Vegetarian Resource Group. I learned much valuable writing, interviewing, and recipe developing skills. I appreciated how this internship was able to use my passions for science, ethics, and diet and apply them to the articles I wrote over my time.

My first topics for articles were about food and restaurants. I did a restaurant review on Gangster Vegan Organics and got to discover a great vegan place in my city of Baltimore, Maryland. I wrote two vegan recipes about dishes that I make frequently: Dal Fry and Open Tofu Sandwich. These were really fun to develop and write-up because I love to cook and seeing people try to prepare my dishes gives me a sense of fulfillment. My new goal is to try to continue writing up recipes I prepare so that I can always look back at the dishes I recreated and replicate them. Also, I helped to write entries for the VRG online USA/Canada restaurant guide. I was able to continue practicing my writing skills but also learn how to produce concise information. It was amazing to get to learn about a variety of vegan restaurants throughout the U.S. and Canada.

I helped to review two condiments for the Veggie Bits column in Vegetarian Journal: True Made Foods’ Veggie Ketchup and Mighty Sesame Harissa’s Tahini. It was really fun learning how to describe condiments to the fitted audience. I loved learning about these two condiments and making food with them. I challenged myself to incorporate them into my own cooking as well.

I wrote a scientific article review about the correlation between different diets and strokes. I had a good time connecting with Dr. Reed Mangels, as well as learning the ways to read an article and pick out important information. I plan to use these skills when I go off to Johns Hopkins University in the upcoming fall.

Later I started to interview professionals about their careers and opinions about topics such as the medical field, patient care, advising, and diets. I learned a lot of skills doing these projects because I had to brainstorm questions and write-up what I learned from the answers. One lesson I learned from interviews is that the answer and topics you expect to write about may not always be what you get and so you have to be flexible with what direction the interview goes. I interviewed Dr. Lavine (a retired ophthalmologist) about the promotion of healthy diets and the medical system. I also interviewed Cathy Conway (a registered dietitian who works with developmentally disabled adults) about patient-centered care. It was really amazing connecting to these professionals and learning something new.

I worked with another intern on writing an Intern Catch-Up for the VRG’s upcoming 40th anniversary in 2022. It was challenging trying to find people and their contact information but, I had a lot of fun collaborating with my peers. I received a lot of advice from the past interns, which was nice as well.

One of the last pieces I wrote was a blog post about the high school ethics bowl in which I participated. The topic was factory farming or also known as a concentrated animal feeding operation. I discovered how different terms can be biased. I hope people can learn about bias and check the terms they use and what they mean to people with different points of view.

Overall, I learned a lot about writing and making connections as an interviewer. I plan to continue to stay connected to The Vegetarian Resource Group and hopefully attend in-person events in the future.

Shantika is an entering student at Johns Hopkins University.

For information about The Vegetarian Resource Group internships, see https://www.vrg.org/student/index.php

To support The Vegetarian Resource Group internships, donate at www.vrg.org/donate

Or join The Vegetarian Resource Group at https://www.vrg.org/member/2013sv.php