As yesterday, Thursday, marked my final day of classes as a humble Middlebury College student, today marks my final day as your loyal blogger of the wonderful Internships blog here at the Career Services Laboratory of Dreams. I wanted to send off by giving you delicious readers some kibbles and bits of advice on what I have learned about internships during my time:
1) Start early – early bird really does catch the worm. If you know what you are interested in your coming into your first year, second year or what have you, great, talk to your parents, family, and friends to see how you can land an opportunity to get working experience. The more you have the better and the more you have early the easier it will be to land the one you really want later. Even if you don’t know what you want to do, come to Career Services so you can start the exploration process and getting your resume and cover letter ready to fly.
2) Become friends with the people at Career Services – one, they are super cool, and two, they can really help you in the research, application, and interview process. They will also alert you of all of the resources we have here including MOJO, LACN, Vault, Internships.com and many more.
3) Do your research and your internship homework – if you are applying to a company, make sure first and foremost that you understand the company, position, and why you are interested in gaining experience there. Know about the industry and if you have a passion for it then make sure you are able to convey that passion on paper in your cover letter and in the interview.
4) Stay on top of your stuff! – don’t be like me and wait until the last minute to send in application because that is the best way to miss deadlines and to make errors on your apps. Explore all resources and avenues to an internship. Use MOJO, of course, but don’t limit yourself to that one database, use LACN, employer websites, and other internship databases
5) Don’t fret – if you really want an internship and you utilize all of the resources at your disposal and you really work to gain the experience you want, you will get it. Nothing is going to be handed to you, unless you are real lucky, so go out and get what you want. Stay confident and stay humble. You go to Middlebury, you are smart, but there are also a lot of qualified smart people out there too. Just because you don’t get the internship you want doesn’t mean you won’t get another. Get it, baby.
So that was really more of a sympathetic pep talk but I think they are valuable things to remember. It has been a pleasure writing about cheese and internships on this super terrific blog for you beautiful people out there. Continue to read the blog for more juicy updates about Internships and careers and “you don’t go changin.” Boom.