College students have internships all over the country. Your friends are probably doing different types of internship work wherever they are. What are we supposed to get out of these “internships”?
My friend and I were talking about this and he had some pretty good advice on the matter. He said, “Everyone should come out of the internship with at least three things that they’ve learned.” If you learn three things during your internship work, then I would consider the internship a success.
If an employer asks you in an interview about what you learned while working as an intern, you should be able to talk there ear off. If you have three solid, deep things that you learned in your internship, it will go a long way.
The three things in your internship can be about anything. They can be from experiences, or they can be epiphanies that you had. Either way, they should be a direct result of your internship work, and they should be solid and meaningful.
For instance, my friend who is interning for a Senator said he learned
- That wants to run for office eventually
- How to expand his professional network
- How the U.S. political system actually works
I was intrigued by his experiences, and wanted to learn more about his internship work myself. And I wasn’t even interviewing the guy.
If you learn three solid, deep things during your internship and can talk about them, it will automatically tell people that you are smart enough to pick up on these things and that you take yourself seriously as a professional.
Think about what you’re learning in your internship work on a deep level and you’ll impress anyone who asks about what you did while you were an intern. This will definitely make your internship work worthwhile.
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