CEL E-Newsletter October 31, 2008

"An international internship is a great opportunity for personal and professional development, with the added benefit of gaining insight on cross-cultural perspectives. The CEL's International Internship Resources provide you with all the information and sources you will need to begin your internship search. You can explore experiential opportunities in a specific country of interest, or you may also use the intern sites of past and current Oles as a base for your investigation. Stop by the CEL to learn more about the marvels of interning abroad!"

Idealist is a project of Action Without Borders, a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 with offices in the United States and Argentina. Idealist is an interactive site where people and organizations can exchange resources and ideas, locate opportunities and supporters, and take steps toward building a world where all people can lead free and dignified lives.

Sign up to receive daily alerts with new opportunities matching your interests, create a personal profile to network with other Idealists. Explore and learn about community action, nonprofits, and more in the resource centers. Follow unique stories by reading the blogs and listening to the podcasts. Most of all use the idealist.org to find people, organizations, jobs, volunteer opportunities, events, and more.

Describe your summer internship.
I interned this sumer at a national nonprofit organization called Reach Out and Read, which works to promote early literacy in the United States. Reach Out and Read trains pediatricians to teach parents about the importance of reading aloud to their children; it creates literacy-rich waiting rooms (as in it puts used books in waiting rooms so that kids can take a book home with them at every routine check-up). I worked as the communications intern but dabbled in the government affairs department as well.

What was a typical day like?

I lived in Boston and took the T to work, which started at 9 am. In the first couple weeks, I'd check-in with my supervisor first thing in the morning to get my daily assignment. Eventually my projects became more time consuming -- I drafted letters, media alerts, press releases and promotional articles on behalf of Reach Out and Read. But there were always the unglamorous assignments like compiling mailing lists and stuffing an endless amount of envelopes to put me back in my place as the office's token intern.

In retrospect, how do you gauge your experience?

When I anticipated my internship experience, I thought that it would give me a better sense of what I may want to do in the future, but it instead gave me a better sense of what I may not want to do, which I think is just as beneficial. I realized that I don't want to work in a traditional office setting, but I did develop transferable skills, especially ones in the writing department. As of then, I had felt like a confident analytical and creative writer, but I hadn't had any experience writing professionally. I learned to distill content to the most importance facts, and to present those facts in an eye-catching way. I learned how to act appropriately in a professional environment, which, to me, made the experience incredibly worthwhile.