- College student Rebecca Bergmaier worked at the Grand Canyon while managing a remote internship.
- She worked the internship in the mornings and her other job in the evenings. She camped on weekends.
- Bergmaier said she’d recommend working in a national park for the summer to other college students.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rebecca Bergmaier, a college senior at Temple University in Philadelphia studying business management and marketing. She worked a full-time summer job at the Grand Canyon while also managing a part-time internship. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m from Pennsylvania originally and go to school in Philadelphia, where I’m studying business management and marketing. I wanted to get outdoors, and in 2022 I heard about CoolWorks, which is a really great website to find seasonal work positions.
At that time I’d only been to two national parks and I wasn’t really an avid camper or hiker. I was looking for something in my dream park, Yellowstone National Park, which I hadn’t been to yet.
I found the company Xanterra Travel Collection, a concessionaire that operates in the park. I originally applied for a food and beverage position, but they actually had a paid internship program. So since I’m studying business, I did their hospitality management internship in the summer of 2023 in Yellowstone before my junior year.
Then, in the summer of 2024, before my senior year, I went to work for Xanterra at the Grand Canyon. I worked at the front desk of a lodge. I also had a part-time, paid, remote position as a social media intern for my college’s business school.
I worked all day but camped on my days off
I was working all day long during the week, but I still got so much joy from it.
I did a 40-hour week at the front desk of the lodge. Most of my shifts were in the evening, so I typically worked from 2 to 10 p.m. I’m a night owl, so I liked being out late. I had to use my headlamp walking home. You’d also see so many stars because the Grand Canyon is a Dark Sky Park, which means that there’s pretty much no lighting in the entire park.
The Grand Canyon is pretty much like a built-out community, with a library, bank, and hospital, so in the mornings I would go to the library, which was so lovely and air conditioned. I would just set up my computer and do my internship work from there. Sometimes I would even sit on my laptop outside the library if it was nice out.
So I would do my internship in the morning, then I’d go to work, and then on my weekends I would typically take two or three days off and just go into the woods and camp. Or my friend and I would road trip to other areas of Arizona, like Sedona.
There’s a lot of college kids who are working seasonally at the national parks in the summers. There’s also older people and you meet people from all over the world. You make so many friends, because everybody builds a community together. You are also typically provided with lodging and meals, depending on the job.
It’s a great way for college students to spend a summer
I’m not sure what I want to do when I graduate next year, but I have been looking for positions away from the parks. I’m based on the East Coast and I have a lot of connections in the Philadelphia sustainability scene and the sustainable business network here.
I would definitely recommend other students look into spending a summer at national park. You get to move out to the middle of nowhere and it can be so lovely to kind of go off the grid.
It’s also an amazing way to travel. You are often provided with somewhere to live for the whole summer and all your meals. So it’s definitely a convenient way to travel.
I feel like a lot of college students fantasize about just dropping out of school and living in the middle of the wilderness. It’s definitely a great way to satisfy that craving.
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