City Year alum Rebekah Wilson ’14, talks about the benefits of interning with City Year, an AmeriCorps program that employs young people in a year (or two) of full-time service in public schools. City Year New York currently offers a variety of summer internship opportunities for students in programs, operations, development, and recruitment.
(Note: summer internships offered by City Year New York differ from corps member positions, which require a full-time, ten month commitment, ideal for gap year students or recent college graduates. Summer internships are part-time, office based positions, ideal for undergraduate students. Though internships with City Year are unpaid, students are encouraged to apply for funding through EIA in the spring.)
I first found out about City Year in the fall of my senior year of high school, while researching gap year options online. It’s been five years since then and I have a hard time conceptualizing exactly what prompted me to apply in the first place, but I remember looking at the application with an overwhelming desire to do something big. Yes, something good. Yes, something interesting and challenging and altruistic that would look attractive on my resume and hopefully broaden my college prospects. But mostly I was attracted to the idea of something larger than me that would sweep me up out of the small alcove of the world I had grown up in and land me on a different a shore, a shore that would involve an understanding of social justice issues on the ground level and a sense of what could be done about them. Perhaps one of the biggest indications that I did indeed take part in something big is that, two years after graduating from City Year, I am still processing all the ways I grew and lessons I learned.
