Contrary to popular belief, not all internships come in the form of dead-end desk jobs of filing paperwork 10 hours a week and eternally staring down the clock. With the help of many campus resources, students can find opportunities that are stimulating, challenging and even tailored specifically to their major or career goals.
A few have even found themselves coordinating events for the ‘Tyra Banks Show,’ dissecting leeches and serving subpoenas.
The Career Services Center, Academic Internship Program and Division of Biological Sciences offer services to help students wade through endless job descriptions.
But even the 1,000 or more internships offered through these departments ‘mdash; ranging from 10 to 20 hours a week, paid and unpaid, local and abroad’mdash; can be tough to handle without focus.
Through career counseling, resume critiques and internship workshops, the Career Services Center attempts to provide students with personalized assistance. Its Web site also hosts various internship search engines, such as Port Triton and ExperienceLink on their Internship Supersite. Updated every day, the three Web sites list all current internship positions available to UCSD students.
‘We’re the hub for employers who want to recruit for UCSD talent,’ Career Services Center Internship Coordinator Christy Quiogue said. ‘When employers have an opening, they contact the Career Services Center, and we post them on our exclusive UCSD database of internships on Port Triton. We’ve also tried to create a consortium of opportunities on our Experience Web site.’
Eleanor Roosevelt College senior Jacqueline Franco found success through the center, landing an internship at a public defender’s office after tailoring her resume.
‘The public defender’s office [internship] was hands-on,’ Franco said. ‘I would serve subpoenas, get police reports, interview clients in jails, go to houses of witnesses and get statements and work with attorneys closely. It was peer mentoring and advising, close association of working with attorneys and having them guide you to what they want.’
Students seeking an internship for academic credit are directed to the Academic Internship Program, where anyone with 90 units, a 2.5 minimum GPA and at least two upper-division courses can apply to quarter-long internships for either four, eight or 12 units with a grade of Pass/No Pass.
‘[In the AIP application, students} identify skills, some relevant courses, interest, focus and what is appealing to them,’ AIP Internship Counselor Annie Abbott said. ‘We then meet with them for an hour to talk more about their goals and interests, help with [the] resume, cover letter and [the] interview and referring process.’
If a student has already obtained an internship, he or she may cont
act AIP to request credit for the job. After using AIP to land an internship with the ‘Tyra Banks Show,’ Thurgood Marshall junior Raymond Rollan was able to indulge his interests in both media and political science.
‘I want to pursue entertainment law, so I felt that [the internship] was a nonconventional way to do so,’ Rollan said. ‘I felt like this experience mediated the two. I now understood the politics that went into show-making and teleproductions.’
Not only was Rollan able to pursue an internship in his fields, but was given the opportunity to experience life on the East Coast: Throughout his three-month internship, he resided in the heart of New York City.
‘Moving to NYC was in itself a big deal,’ Rollan said. ‘I really got to live in a different area, different comfort zone. I got to experience what it was like to immerse myself in a different culture and experience what a real working life was from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.’
Science majors looking for a lab-based research internship need search no further than UCSD’s Division of Biological Sciences. Besides listing’ faculty with lab-intern openings, the division’s Web site offers links to many other research internship opportunities in fields such as biotechnology.
The division also allows students academic credit for their lab internships, with BISP 199. After studying’ the development of the nervous system in leeches, Eleanor Roosevelt College junior Vaibhav Konanur found his class material to be more accessible.
‘In the lab, I used an enzyme to choose a protein,’ Konanur said. ‘We learned about how that happened in metabolic biochemistry. It was a backwards way of learning. I didn’t know the mechanism of how the enzyme chose the protein when I first used it.’
As a bonus, Konanur’s internship allowed him to discover his field of interest under a new light.
‘My career plan was to study and become a doctor,’ Konanur said. ‘Now, I’m rethinking and reconsidering my career path to do research in the future. So I’m still going to med school, but maybe after my M.D., [I’ll] do research.’
Readers can contact Jasmine Ta at [email protected].