On summer internships.
TweetTime for another entry in my random series of “tips for young PR pros.” Actually, the idea to write these posts was initially inspired by one of my old GolinHarris colleagues who always talked about creating a “what they don’t teach you in J-school” class to share with junior executives. Or, as I might call it, “The things you should be doing on the job to keep the job.”
So Tuesday I was discussing my “theory of summer” with one of my clients – the idea that college students shouldn’t succumb to the pressure to fill up their resumes with 40-hour-week interenships during the summer. She had just received corporate approval to hire a couple of part-time interns to support some of her department’s initiatives. We talked about some of our summer job experiences and what we learned – she learned that being a school teacher wasn’t for her, I learned the very important life skill of pouring a perfect draft beer (at a Moorpark, Calif. pizza parlor).
And in thinking about it further, summer should be a time for experimenting. If your career counselor is pushing you to get your resume filled up, find a way a do it part-time. Just because you have the whole week free during the summer, doesn’t mean you need to dedicate it to an agency to monitor their client’s Twitter feeds and total up the number of followers for each post. Find ways to balance your planned career track with time to be yourself and make memories.
My “best summer ever” was last year, when we took our long 31-day road trip across the Western U.S. My other “best summer ever,” during college, was a year where I didn’t focus on a full-time internship and instead worked on a PR project part-time and worked out in the real world part-time.
The internships will always be there. Summer won’t.
