Internships

By Kate | Permalink | No Comments | April 23rd, 2007 | Trackback

Internships can be considered one form of volunteering, and usually consist of a short period of unpaid work, done to gain experience or practical skills in a field in which you’d like to be employed. A wide range of situations can fall under the umbrella of internships – some may be paid, some may be full-time, some may gain you credit for your program of study.

In my informal perusing of internship opportunities over time, it seems that many in fact require you to be a student enrolled in an undergrad or graduate course at the time you do the internship, or to have recently graduated. It’s not clear to my why this is, from the organization’s side anyway – certainly if it’s unpaid, it makes sense that someone who’s earning credit for it might be more interested in it than someone who’s not, but I don’t know why it matters to the organization if the person is a current student or not.

During my last year of university, I did a three-month internship with a local non-profit organization, assisting the volunteer coordinator organize a yearly fundraising event. It’s hard to gauge the real effect on my career situation because almost immediately upon finishing, I moved overseas to start teaching English, but even today it adds another dimension to my resume.

For some food for thought on internships, have a look at About.com’s top ten internship sites and the Volunteer Logue post on Human Rights Watch. If you’re not a student but are interested in arranging your own internship or volunteer experience, stay tuned for some insight and experience on doing this, and in the mean time check out Idealist.org.

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