A bracing glimpse into the real world
Posted on August 27, 2007
When graduate student Morene Clingly landed an eight-week internship with the Foreign Commercial Service Department of the U.S. Embassy in London, she expected long hours and pencil pushing. What she got was a lot more exciting.
“We actually had a terrorist threat once and we had to crouch down,” Clingly said. “It turned out to not be a big deal, but it was [crazy].”
Clingly was one of many students who spent their summer vacation gaining work experience as an intern. She said that while the work was a challenge, the experience was worth it. Meeting world business leaders and diplomats was an everyday occurrence.
“You actually had a conversation with them,” Clingly said. “It was a lifetime memory that will always be embedded in my mind.”
Even though her internship was unpaid and living in London was expensive, Clingly recommended the work experience to others.
“The sooner you do an internship, the better,” she said. “There’s only so much you can learn in a classroom, and you want to apply what you learned in a classroom to the real world.”
While Clingly traveled one of the farthest distances, she was not the only JMU student who spent her summer interning.
Senior Kristin Dyak spent her summer in New York City interning for the Music Standards Department of MTV Networks. She spent 10 weeks working on music videos and popular television programs.
“It was an amazing experience,” Dyak said. “You really get to see what’s going on in the work world.”
While in New York, Dyak picked up a second internship with the production department for MTV’s True Life.
“If you’re going to do an internship, make sure you’re actually doing work,” she said. “Ask for work that’s related to what you want to do and if it’s not working out, find somewhere else.”
Dyak discovered that working in the standards department is not something she’d enjoy as a career.
“Honestly, I loved [the experience], but instead of going up there to find the job that I want, I found a job that I didn’t really want to do,” she said.
Hospitality and Tourism Management professor and coordinator of the Annual Internship Fair Steve Welpott agrees that an internship can help students make up their minds about a career.
“Students learn what it is like to work in the real world,” he said. “They sometimes come back and say it was an eye-opening experience, and I now realize I don’t want to work in this part of the industry.”
Clingly’s internship helped her realize that she would prefer a corporate career to a career in government.
“It helped me narrow down what I wanted to do in the future,” she said.
One the other hand, senior Robert Winschel found that his internship with the federal affairs team at Pricewaterhouse Coopers Washington Federal Practice helped him find a career.
“It was awesome,” he said. “It was a good networking opportunity.”
His 10 week internship led to a full-time position proposal which he accepted for after college.
Winschel is not the only intern whose internship has helped him land a job, according to the associate director of Career and Academic Planning Nina Stensby-Hurst.
“The feedback we receive from employers is consistent,” she said. “Students who complete an internship or participate in relevant hands on experiences are much more competitive in the job market.”