The official student newspaper of Walter Johnson High School

The Pitch

The official student newspaper of Walter Johnson High School

The Pitch

The official student newspaper of Walter Johnson High School

The Pitch

Internships: Time Well Spent

In planning your schedule for senior year, several elements come into play. What’s the right balance of easy versus hard classes? How many APs do you want or should take? How committed to school will you actually be?

After choosing the remaining required classes you’ll need to graduate, electives can fill up the rest of your schedule. Some opt to take classes like ceramics or Food Trends; to many, they’re merely filler to meet the seven classes they need to take. This seems like a waste of time to me.  If you’re not interested in something and don’t need a credit in a certain area to graduate, why take the course? Your time is much better spent doing something that interests you, perhaps via an internship.

The obvious main idea to keep in mind when getting an internship is to make sure it’s a good one. Admittedly, this can be hard to find without the proper information (which is why I’m here, writing this). Keep in mind that interns, traditionally, are less respected than the regular employees in a workplace. Of course, you don’t want to get stuck fetching coffee every time you go, but be aware that you might be ordered around a little. 

Let’s start with the blatantly undesirable option: a bad internship. Avoid anything that would involve tons of paperwork or excessive amounts of menial tasks. You’ll end up doing a few seemingly unimportant things wherever you go, but keep in mind that a good internship is one that outbalances the boring tasks with the valuable. Visiting your internship-to-be beforehand will give you a good sense of how the system works, and what you’ll most likely be doing. Your superiors also have a lot to do with the quality of your experience, as they can delegate unwanted tasks to you. Try to meet them if you visit.

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Finally, don’t get stuck at an internship where you aren’t getting any experience in the field you’re interested in. That defeats the entire point.

WJ will give you options, and choosing the best one won’t be as hard as this article might make it seem… Just invest a little time, and set yourself up well. It pays off.

It might seem like a lot of trouble to go through such a process to get an internship, rather than just take an easy class. The rewards you reap will absolutely be worth the time.

At the very least, working at a decent internship will provide you with something anyone with business experience can tell you is key: connections. Your employer can vouch for you for future jobs, add some value to your résumé and put you in contact with others that might be interested in what you can do for them. Getting yourself out there is essential, and there’s no point waiting around to start when you can make a name for yourself just by starting at an internship.

An internship will also prepare you more for the work environment; you’ll gain a first-hand appreciation of how the field works. The field in which you’re interested may function entirely differently than you thought, and this can be for better or for worse. Either way, the insight is valuable.

Perhaps most valuable of all the benefits is that an internship will set you up for a job over the summer before going to college. Making a little extra money before college is definitely something to pursue. Take senior Jackson Barr as an example: after doing an internship at local laboratory Fina Biosolutions, he’s able to continue working at the same lab over the summer as a paid employee.

 “It’s practically a seamless transition, especially as I already know how to do the work expected of me [as a lab technician] after working as an intern,” he said. “I’ll get a paycheck once school has ended and I start working more. I know others having trouble finding a job for this summer, but because of the internship this job fell into my lap.”

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