CMU Student Intern Kaylee Winter Joins the Cleaver

Hello, Clare County, my name is Kaylee Winter. I am a senior at Central Michigan University, majoring in journalism with a minor in business administration. I am 21 years old and from Macomb County, Michigan.

For the next few months, I will be interning here at the Clare County Cleaver. While interning, I will be expanding my journalism experiences through writing articles and gathering more knowledge for the career that I want to have after graduating in the spring. I am extremely excited for this new journey I am starting and am thankful for the Clare County Cleaver for giving me this opportunity.

Outside of my internship this year, I am also an editor for the Style and Beauty section of Grand Central Magazine. I have written for this off-campus online magazine since the fall of 2018, and decided to test my knowledge of writing and editing even further this year. Even though I have a busy schedule this year between being a full-time student, my internship and being an editor, I will be giving my best efforts in all that I am doing and allowing myself to dive deeper into the journalism world to prepare myself for a successful career.

While driving to the office of the Clare County Cleaver to meet Angela Kellogg, I was entering Clare County for the first time. Meeting Kellogg and the time I spent with her gave me hope for this internship and calmed all the nerves that I had going into this experience. She made me feel nothing short of welcomed, gave me a tour of the office and drove me around the entire county. Driving around with her, I was amazed by all the history she told me and saw all the beauty that the county holds.

With it being my first time in Clare, I was quite impressed with the county as a whole. Driving through the windy roads and seeing the vacation homes around the lakes made me feel like I was up north in Canadian Lakes. Seeing the fairgrounds, schools and the small but crowded streets of downtown, reminded me of parts of my own childhood. I felt comforted knowing what a tight-knit community I was in, especially after meeting a few of the county’s residents. After leaving and driving back down to Mount Pleasant, I felt a sense of ease, comfortableness and happiness knowing that this was where I will be doing my internship.

I am looking forward to many things going into my last year at CMU, with my internship here at the Clare County Cleaver being one of the top things. Knowing the county that I’ll be writing for and meeting the staff at the newspaper made me optimistic that this journey of my college career will be one of the best learning experiences for me. I am very thankful for Angela Kellogg and for the Clare County Cleaver for giving me this opportunity and for giving me a glimpse of what my career will be like one day.