Guest Author - Valarie Anthony

Making The Most Of Your College Internship Experience

What Is A College Internship?

A college internship is a temporary employment situation in which a college student is afforded the opportunity to obtain valuable work experience in their chosen field of study. College internships can be paid or unpaid, although in most cases they are unpaid positions that provide the student with experience, as well as college credits.

How Can A Student Find An Internship Position That Is Right For Them?

Before starting the job search, a college student needs to ask what his/her interests and abilities are. Do you enjoy working with people, data, or both? Do you prefer working outdoors, or in an office environment? Are you a team player, or do you prefer working alone? Do you take direction well?

Then, as a potential intern, you'll need to ask yourself what type of internship position you are seeking. Is it a very short-term position that may only lasts a few weeks, or is it a longer-term position that may last from six months to a year? Is your goal to earn money from this internship, while also earning college credits?

Then you'll need to ask yourself what your goals are. What goals do you hope to achieve by the end of the internship? If you are a culinary major, then you should begin your search by contacting eating establishments, as opposed to law firms.

In many college internship situations, the student is able to take what he/she has learned in the classroom and apply that knowledge to real-world situations on the job. A perfect example of this type of situation is the social work intern, who up until this point has learned many theories by reading about them in textbooks and testing that knowledge through quizzes and exams. As an intern, the social work student is given the opportunity to apply those theories and put them into practice. Both the intern and that student's supervisor will look at the internshp experience and see how it has helped the student meet his/her goals of professional development.

Throughout the internshp assignment, the intern is responsible for taking notes and then sort of analyzing the internship experience, while at the same time, the intern's supervisor is also keeping notes and evaluating the intern's performance. The supervisor will then ascertain whether or not the internship was a valuable and/or positive one for the student, as well as for the organization that the student has worked for. The student's immediate supervisor is also responsible for determining whether or not the student is going in the direction that he/she would like to go, or that the student's professor would like the student to go. It is during this evaluation, in the case where the student is not where he/she should be, that the supervisor, as well as the student's professor will counsel that student to assist him/her in accomplishing the goals of the student's academic program.