On Internships

When I was a senior in high school, I sat on the student government executive board. In our typical Westchester precociousness, we fancied ourselves a pretty important group, making such decisions as who would dj the Homecoming dance and which of the possible senior prank options were actually legal enough to go through with. There was, however, one issue that came to us that was kind of a big deal should seniors have internships? There had been a big movement among the schools in our area pushing seniors in their last month of high school into internships, probably more to keep them out of trouble at school than anything else. Of course we loved the idea of being able to basically play hookie and, in many cases, work for our parents ("") for that glorious last month of school where swimsuit season starts. What we didn't realize at the time was the value that these internships actually had.

The internship rule didn't get implemented at my old high school for another couple of years, so my first internship was in college. I won a fellowship through which I awarded the position of office intern at an underserved high school in the Bronx. Every morning, just like a real commuter, I hopped on the train, swapped it for a subway in Harlem and then traveled all the way up to Bronx where I swapped my Uggs for heels and started my day as an urban education intern. Most of my work consisted of building up a resource library for students SAT prep books, college guides, that sort of thing. Other tasks were to read, edit and advise on students' essays and general assignments, and process their college applications. I also ended up putting some of the students who had already been accepted into colleges in touch with friends I had at those schools to try and give them at least the beginnings of a network when they arrived and were totally overwhelmed, as 99.9% of college freshmen are.

The value of my internship was immense. First off, I met absolutely the greatest people. The teachers and college counselors were probably the most inspiring, hardworking, walkthewalk people I've ever met. The kids were absolutely fabulous in that they were smart, interesting, nononsense types who were working their tails off to have something that the majority of them had only ever heard about from watching Gilmore Girls. Secondly, I learned a lot about myself, what I cared about and was capable of. I'd spent the entire semester before the internship waking up at 10:30am and banging out papers at the last minute and suddenly I'd been transformed into a disciplined adult who was doling out advice to people who were practically the same age as me about which topics to write their college admissions essays on. Third, I'd traveled every day to a place that was only about a 20 minute drive from where I'd grown up, but which I'd always imagined to be a scary and horrible place. It wasn't. Check out the Bronx, it's really not that bad and the food is awesome (and cheap!).

The last reason is one that all college and probably even high school students should listen up for resume building. While this isn't the reason to ever take a job or internship, it definitely helps. By the time your senior year of college rolls around you'll realize that having internships on a resume as credentials is a huge deal.

So go out and get one! There're opportunities everywhere. Seriously. I just googled "internship" and it came up with 14.6 million hits.