Career Benefits of an Internship

On my post titled One Way to Find a Career that You'll Love, I touted the benefits of summer internships: they pay you, give you some good work experience, and let you see if you like working in a particular field. Many people agreed with my thoughts, the first commenter adding this:

I'll second the idea of internships. While a student, you'll learn all the theories and study great people in your field. It's all great and wonderful to do nothing but dream and do mock projects. An internship in the 'real world' will allow you to put the theories to the test and to do real work. Also, you'll learn about office politics, how people make money in your profession and hopefully pick up a mentor. Things that the university can't/won't teach you.

I had two internships during my school years, and this commenter is right on target -- they both gave me some great insights into the "real world." The first one even changed my life, moving me from a planned career in law into the business field. The second made me more marketable when I went to get my first job. That's the point the second commenter made:

Another benefit of taking an internship or doing work in the field is that it makes you more marketable for a job after graduation if you decide that you still want to stay in the field. Also, it might make you a more attractive candidate for scholarships or fellowships for furthering your education if it's necessary. At the very least (and this is still a -great- benefit) you can get good letters of recommendation from people who are already achieving.

Finally, the comments end with this thought from a current intern:

I'll fourth the opinion about getting an internship/co-op. Right now I'm in the middle of one with a very old, very large Fortune 500 company. I'm a design engineer and a mechanical engineer by degree. Finding out that corporate engineering is more like book keeping has been quite disappointing, but I'm still glad I took the job. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have realized that I needed to get going on opening up other options.

This is what happened to me. I took a law internship, realized I hated it, and moved to a completely different field. It changed my life (for the better) and I'll always be thankful I took that position.

Comments

[Nick]

Thanks for using my comment in your post! Seriously though, I'm in the waning months of my internship (been going at it since end of Feb.) and my opinion still hasn't really changed.

I've realized that sometimes things aren't just what they seem and what you think they are. That's why I'm changing from a mechanical engineer to computer science major. It'll be tough going into my junior year to do a complete flip flop like that, but I can pull it off if I arrange my schedule correctly.

The most important part about my internship was realizing how terrible and boring the day to day lives of these people I work with are. Half of them never smile, and that's definitely not a good thing.

[Sam]

Internships do play a great role in career enhancement. Internship gives a person hands on practice. All fields now have internship oppurtunities.Internships shoudl also be fun and enjoyable.