Heather Basak, Administrative Support Assistant

Working for the National Park Service was never on Heather’s radar, but after interning at a few different NPS sites after college, she got bit by the parkie bug and discovered that working in parks was the right fit for her. Today, Heather joins us virtually to talk about her work as a remote administrative support assistant, or as Ranger Jake calls it, “the grease of the Yellowstone machine!”

View definitions and links discussed in this episode at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Miles: You know.

Miles: From Yellowstone National Park. This is what we do. I'm Miles Barger.

Jake: And I'm Jake Frank. You know.

Miles: Hey, Jake. How's it going?

Jake: Miles, I mustache is looking super good today.

Miles: Yeah, our podcast listeners can't see my new magnificent mustache.

Jake: But, guys, it is spectacular.

Miles: To use mustache wax. That's the tip. Yeah. today we're going to be talking to Heather Basak. she's an administrative support assistant, real stones division of resource education and youth programs. We call it Rippy for short. before we get started, though, a little trivia question for you, Jake.

Jake: Bring it.

Miles: I don't know how you would know this, but you can make a good guess. How many seasonal employees does r e y p employ in the busy summer season? Rounded to the nearest ten. What do you think? 100 were pretty close. A little over.

Jake: 90.

Miles: One more.

Jake: 70.

Miles: 80.

Jake: I did that on purpose.

Miles: Nice. I think the four positions would be 83, but somewhere around 80. That's a lot. It is a lot. There's a lot that goes into, it goes into that, including hiring all those people and doing paperwork and doing budgeting and all sorts of fun things. so.

Jake: You got to pay the people.

Miles: We got to pay them. We we like to. and then one note, if you notice a difference in sound quality for this episode, there's a good reason for that that we're going to get into during this episode. Heather is a fully remote employee, so we're doing our interview via video chat. So the sound might be a little bit different and that's on purpose.

Miles: So you ready? Heather? Ready as you'll ever be. Yep. Heather, that is good to see you as always. So first question to kick it off, when and where did you get your start in the National Park Service? Or if you got started in something that led into the Park Service, you could even start with that. Sure.

Heather: so I never thought I would actually be working for the National Park Service. And I grew up like, I mean, we didn't know existed national parks. We didn't really do that. We did other types of vacations, but never the parks. So that was on never on my radar. And it wasn't until I was in college that I visited my first national park and the national park in Texas.

Heather: And wonderful trip. I had a blast. Beautiful. But again, I didn't it get. I never thought that I would work for them. And in 1820, towards the end of college and I didn't have a job. What exactly? Sure. What I wanted to do. I was thinking about going to museum studies because I was like a political figure. but I didn't have anything lined up.

Heather: And I actually saw a poster and one of the buildings in my college, and it was for the Student Conservation Association, or SCA, and it talked about internships and public lands. And I thought it could be something. To look into. I don't really have anything lined up. I'll look into it. So I went on their website.

Heather: And kind of internships like service, management service, doing a lot of that service park ranger type jobs. But then there were other internships like archeologist or, territorial intern that was really interested. I was really interested in scattered throughout the par