2020 SUMMER INTERNS: Reata Elting

With only two weeks left of my internship,  I still feel like there is so much more I could do here. I started my summer at the Byron location in the Animal Nutrition division trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my internship to get the best experience possible. I knew coming in I always wanted to pursue sales and animal nutrition.  Living in the Thayer County area for all my life, I took that as my advantage to start calling my local livestock producers. I started by calling the producers I was most comfortable with first, and who I’ve known for a long time. I slowly worked my way into talking to people who I had never spoke to before and creating relationships with them. A normal day for me is either out talking to producers about their feeding program or in the office helping customers.

One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is “the only source of knowledge is experience.” For the past nine weeks, this quote has become a motivator for me to make the best out of this internship. I’m excited to go back to school at Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture (NCTA) to tell my professors and friends about what an amazing opportunity I had interning for Aurora Coop this summer. I would just like to thank the producers I talked to this summer for taking time out of their busy schedule to help me with my project, while giving me some great advice for what I should pursue in the future. I would also like to thank everyone at Aurora Coop for making me feel part of the team. I would like to give a big thank you to my mentor, Dru Melvin, for teaching me everything he knows about the Animal Nutrition division and always asking me if I’m winning.