Parents – Internships

Recently, it seems that each incoming class is becoming more aware of the importance of internships. Freshmen, and their parents, approach us during Orientation to ask about our internship listings. For us, this is like a breath of fresh air; we no longer need to convince students of the value of doing internships. What we get to do instead is help them find internships, help them understand what an internship is, and help them learn how to get the most out of the experience. First of all, though, we help them clarify the definition. What is an internship? What differentiates it from a summer or part-time job? Basically, an internship is any experience, paid or unpaid, in which the intern gets to work inside an organization in a role very similar to that of a regular employee, and learn something about a career field of possible interest.

There are two defining differences between an Internship and a Job:

  1. A Job is always for pay; an Internship might or might not be for pay.
  2. An Internship is distinguished by whether or not you are learning about a career field in which you are interested. For example, if a student aspires to be a social worker and work with children, a summer job as a camp counselor might be an internship; the same position, held by a finance major, would probably be a summer job.

A student interested in hotel and restaurant management might take an internship as a food server. That same job, held by an education major, would be a summer job. A bank teller position might be an internship for a business major interested in banking, but a summer job for an engineering major. In the end, the experience on the resume will tell the story; there is no need to assign it a label.

The main question is, were you learning something about a career field of interest to you? Sometimes students come back and tell us that the best thing about their internship was that they learned what they did not want to do. This is valuable learning, and certainly preferable to spending four years preparing for something that will make the individual unhappy, or taking a first job that turns out to be a disappointment.