I’m a huge believer in internships and feel they should be widely offered at all levels from Junior year in High School on up. Over the years I’ve had over a hundred interns work for people within my staff or myself. We’ve hired many into full time or part time jobs. These interns learned a lot about publishing and at the same time we got a good look at their skills and interests.
While I was publisher of Nevada Magazine from 1986 to 1992 we had a number of interns from both the University of Nevada and from a local high school. All but one of these was a very positive story. A young lady was working in our Editorial Department and after she’d been there about two months I could tell she was not happy. I brought her into my office and asked what was wrong. She shared that all of her life she’d wanted to be a journalist and she was graduating this semester with a degree in journalism. This was the FIRST TIME she’d ever worked as a journalist and she could tell it was much different than the movies (All the President’s Men was big at that time) and she didn’t know what to tell her parents who had funded her education. While I couldn’t solve this young lady’s problem, this situation forever opened my eyes up more to the need to do internships EARLY and OFTEN.
Good luck with your internships.
By Kirk Whisler