Internships in college are a must. You may not think it’s important to have an internship when your resume is padded with extra curriculars, but the reality is that internships are basically a prerequisite for life. I wish someone had told me my freshman year to take all the opportunities my campus had to offer and apply to as many internships as possible. Internships are not just job opportunities, they allow you to place yourself in what would be your everyday work setting and decide what you like and don’t. I’ve completed one fall semester internship and in that I learned so much I didn’t even realize at the time. I learned how to use programs like Canva, Later, Mailchimp, photography tips, to work on press releases and all the steps that are needed when hosting an event. But most importantly, I learned although PR is fun, it is definitely not my passion. But learning that early on before I graduated and looked for solely PR jobs, is the greatest gift my internship could have given me. This semester I joined a BOLD, which is a student run communications agency. Although this is a club, it’s also an internship. You’re assigned a client and work on them the whole semester to achieve whatever business/ communication goal you set together.
Experience trumps almost any class or course you take, there’s nothing better than hands on work to really understand what a job entails. But most importantly even if you end up hating your internship, you’ll ALWAYS come out learning something valuable.
Pros of Internships:
- Experience
- Connections
- Self realization
- Knowledge
- Job opportunities
Cons of Internships:
- None.
How to Find an Internship:
- School news letter
- Professors
- Classmates
- Handshake
- Theship (for FIU Communication students)
- Updating your LinkedIn
- Clubs/ Organizations
- Attending Panels / seminars
Life by the Horns 