By Ivana Hrynkiw
November 13, 2015
In the Professional Writing Program at UAB, internships are not required. If a student choses to, he or she can take a capstone class instead to fill that credit. If you choose the latter option, you’re making a terrible, terrible mistake.
Internships are hard. They’re hard to find–internship director Cynthia Ryan says internships aren’t required for PW students because of potential conflicts with time management, but those that do have interned for Greater Birmingham Ministries, Birmingham Home and Garden, Weld, The Alabama Literacy Council, and UAB’s Digital Media Center.
Most internship programs only hire one or two interns, so the application process is nerve-racking. You probably won’t get all of the internships you apply for- and that’s okay. You learned how to write a great cover letter, you updated your resume, and you probably got some interviewing practice as well out of the whole ordeal. And, if you go back and apply to that company after graduation, there’s a good chance they’ll remember you as that awesome student who wanted to intern for them.
But, what if you do get it? If you land an internship, you’re landing one of the best opportunities of your college career. You will learn ten times what you learned in your classrooms, you will meet people in the professional writing field, and you may even get paid for it. Also, if you’re doing an internship as a senior, you may even slide right into a job without having to have the stressful experience of job hunting and begging people to give you a chance.
The first day will always be the hardest. You’ll walk in and, I promise, you will have no idea what you’re doing. No matter how hard you studied in class, no matter how many times you have seen your teachers for help, you’re going to be confused.
The best part is that your boss will completely accept that- they know that students have usually had no other experience outside of the classroom and that you wanted to intern to learn. You’re going to mess up, and you will learn from your mistakes. Don’t be embarrassed—that’s expected.
The first day of one of my internships, I made a list for my boss. The list included: Can I wear sandals?; Do I get a lunch break?; Where is my desk?; Is the coffee free?; and many others. My boss barely cracked a smile, and returned my list by the end of the day with answers scribbled down the margins. Then, knowing how embarrassed I was, assured me that they were valuable questions (they weren’t) and never mentioned the process again.
But, by the end of the day, I knew what I should wear to look like a seasoned employee and that I did indeed get a full hour to eat lunch. It was probably the most helpful thing anyone did for me that summer.
By the end of the semester, or the year depending on how long your internship runs, you won’t believe that you didn’t know so many of the things you’re now doing on a daily basis. You will grow professionally- you will know how to talk around a water cooler (if your office has a water cooler, which in my opinion is a dying machine), how to interview for a job, how to make friends in the office- all vital parts of functioning after graduation.
Dr. Ryan says, “Students who intern are introduced to the day-to-day operations of an organization. They experience firsthand what writers are expected to do to meet the needs of various stakeholders, which often involves a lot of research and planning, in addition to composing, that students have learned about but not necessarily seen in action.”
I agree with Dr. Ryan’s point. There is only so much you can learn in the classroom — everything else has to be learned on the job. Every job, even if it is in the same field, is going to be different and different things are going to be required. At some jobs, you may have an assistant to help do research. At others, you may have to be a one-man-band.
These are things that cannot be taught in the classroom, because they’re not expected. The only way to learn them is to experience them.
I’ve done multiple internships in college, and I’m hoping to work for one of them when I graduate this December. I interned for a television station, where I once forgot to turn the camera on. I interned for a newspaper, where I forgot a pen and paper for the biggest interview of my career. I interned for a magazine where I printed the wrong dates for an event.
This is why internships are so vital. These mistakes, as terrible as they sound, are really not so bad. I went back with the camera to film a segment, I borrowed paper and a pen from the person I interviewed, and I apologized to the event creators for the mistake.
These mistakes are okay in an internship, because I learned from them. They wouldn’t be okay in a job, though. Get your mistakes out of the way, so you don’t have to make them when it counts.
