Hey, guys. If you follow this blog on a weekly basis, you will know that this post was supposed to be published last week. It was already scheduled but upon my recheck, I saw that the long-winded blog post I had written had not saved. It’s a good thing I checked it again because only the outline of the post would have been published (the intro was still there), but now I have to write the whole thing AGAIN. I don’t think it’ll be as good as it was the first time, but I honestly don’t give a f*ck anymore. Let’s get into it.
Hello, lovelies! I’ve been interning at Marcus Autism Center this summer, but this isn’t the first time I’ve done an internship. I actually managed to do two internships, in my field of interest, while I was in high school. I learned a lot from those experiences, and I would like to share some of those lessons with you.
//Background//
//Why I Did Two Internships In High School
I’ve mentioned this before, but I went to a very difficult college-leveled high school. In order to graduate, all the students needed to do two internships or research projects in their junior and senior year. Hence, I got two internships.
//What Those Internships Were
The goal was for all the students to do an internship or project in their “field.” It was a STEAM school, so most students had a vague idea of what they wanted to do (engineering internship, Art School Portfolio, etc.). The school would help provide the internship credit for Junior year, but we had to apply for an internship or create a project ourselves for Senior year. I actually had to get both internships myself because I did my junior year internship the summer before and the school didn’t give us summer internships.
Anyway, my first internship was at a non-profit called Lekotek of Georgia, where I worked as a camp counselor for special needs kids. My second internship was during my senior year of high school. Every Thursday and Friday afternoons, I would intern at Emory Autism Center for their “MyLife” Program, where they taught adults with autism independent living skills.
I learned a lot in the process of applying for those internships and actually doing them. Here are seven lessons I learned.
//Lessons Learned//
We also had to take a class that taught us about creating a Resume and how to conduct ourselves in interviews. I’m not including those lessons here, but I may write about those things eventually.
//It’s Good To Try A Lot Of Things Before Settling On A Career
(This is the point where I have to start rewriting again)
Even if you have an idea of what you want to do, it’s a good idea to try a lot of things in the same field. Maybe you’ll figure out that you like some parts more than others. I’ve worked with both adults and kids and I can genuinely say that I prefer working with kids, but I don’t mind working with adults either. If I had found out that I absolutely hated working with adults, I would end narrowing down my career choices to just working with children.
Sometimes you get more out of learning what you hate than being reassured about what you love I know students who figured out what they didn’t want to do because of their internships, and that helped them choose a different major in college, saving them both time and money in the long run. Try a lot of different things to hone in on your career choice.
//Networking & Connections Are More Likely To Get You An Internship Than A Resume
I had to find both of my internships on my own. During my sophomore year of high school, I contacted the non-profit I had been volunteering at for two years and asked them about creating an internship for me. My brother actually went there when he was little, so I had been going there for years before I started volunteering there. Because of that personal connection, I was able to talk on the phone with the founder and CEO of the company about the requirements for my internship and she ended up creating one for me.
Mine wasn’t a special case. A lot of students at my school got internships through a personal connection, whether it was in their field of interest or not (we needed an internship to graduate, so some people with an interest in medicine settled on internships in computer science because that was their best option). This experience taught me that networking is much more important than your resume when it comes to getting a job, so going forward, I’ve been focusing more on cultivating relationships with people in my field rather than just boosting my resume.
//Find Ways To Speak With Potential Hirers
Even though I’m very tactless, I’ve learned over the years that I am a very charismatic talker. I do really well in an interview setting, which is why I try to find ways to actually talk to the people who are hiring me. Going back to my first internship example, I started off by emailing the people I knew at the company. They told me to contact the CEO. I emailed her then set up a time for the phone call. After one phone discussion, everything was set. I could have written everything in an email, but it wouldn’t have come across the same way.
I had to do a phone interview for my current internship, and I pretty much restated all of the things I put in my application and resume. Hearing about my experience instead of just reading it on my resume made a bigger impact. Try to find a way to speak to your potential hirer because it puts a face and voice to the piece of paper they are looking at.
//Volunteering Can Lead To Bigger Opportunities
A lot of these points relate to each other, so I’m sorry if I’m being repetitive. My first internship stemmed from my volunteering there, but my second internship at Emory Autism Center was also related to volunteer work. Volunteering for a company for a long period of time helps you cultivate connections. The employees there will recognize you and will likely remember you if you ever look for a job.
I volunteered at my local library from eighth grade to twelveth grade. Even though I don’t plan on working at a library, there is potential for me to get a job at that specific library because all the employees recognize and trust me after years of volunteering there. I’m sure after a few years, the opportunity will become less available as new workers are hired, but if you time things correctly, volunteer work can lead to a career. In fact, an employee at the Marcus Autism Center told me that she volunteered there after graduating from college then applied for the first available job there and got it. Eventually, working for free pays off.
//I Don’t Know If I Want To Run A Business
This is obviously a personal lesson that I go back and forth on. I could write a whole post about this and I honestly like being self-employed for right now, but there are certain things I learned from my first internship about running a company.
One day, the CEO of the non-profit took me out to lunch and while she went to pay, she started talking to the restaurant owner about sponsoring a fundraiser. That’s when it hit me that you never really stop working when you start a company. And even though my boss enjoyed working with special needs kids, a good chunk of her day wasn’t spent doing that. This got me thinking about what my priorities are for the future, and I still think about this now, but I would rather my reach be deep than wide. I would rather put my focus on helping five kids in person than fifty by delegating. And I’m sure this will eventually change. I know myself and I tend to run with the wind when it comes to my ideas, but that’s where I’m at right now.
//You’ll Do More Than Just Bring Coffee
Movies and television shows lie. You most likely will not spend your internship giving people coffee, not learning anything. I was always pushed into the thick of things during my internships. I’ve always worked with people with disabilities. I run sessions and collect data and am taught by the people who work above me. There were (and still are) literally days where I rarely sat down. The reasons companies have internships is to find potential employees and, honestly, to get free labor. You are actually going to learn and do more than serving people coffee.
//Be A Sponge But Also Give Your Input
As an intern, your job is to learn and do what your mentors tell you. I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth, which is why I tend to stay quiet in a more professional situation. I am also pursuing a career that is related to my personal life. Many people with special needs siblings avoid this field like the plague, so most of the people I work with don’t have an immediate family member with a disability. I’ve learned a lot from life experience, but I tend to not say anything out of fear of looking like a know-it-all (and what do I really know?)
The other day, one of the kids was being rowdy and I was sent to help someone. I knew what we were supposed to do in that situation since I had just done the training a week before, but I didn’t say anything to my point person, who was above me. I was waiting for her to give the command and when she didn’t, someone above her told us what we were supposed to do. In that situation, if I were to speak up, I would have made a really good impression because I would have said exactly what the CS had said, which would have shown that I was paying attention. Definitely sit back and take in all the information you can, but remember that you are allowed to give your input.
Well, I’m done rewriting a blog post I wrote two weeks ago. I’m sure the other one was better, but I think I told most of the points I wanted to get to. This is a situation that warrants this quote: “Done is better than perfect, and good enough is good.” I could spend days rereading and stressing about this blog post and never allow it to be published or let it be read as is. It’s better to just avoid perfectionism.
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Have you done any internships in high school or college? What have you learned from them?