(Photo credit: USAG-Humphreys)
Internships during the summer are stress-free as you don’t have to worry about balancing course work, personal, and your professional life. As a recent college graduate I look back and wish that I had done a summer internship, especially during the transition to junior and senior years. Instead, I spent my summers in university attending summer school.
I reckon that a summer internship would have helped me better prepared for my public relation class projects. I could have applied what I learned from an internship in the project I was working on. In the Public Relations courses at my university, I usually had one project per class in which I had to design a publicity campaign for an organization. I feel that the knowledge gained from the internship would have greatly helped me in completing these class projects. (read more)
I spoke to two students to share their experiences about their summer internships.
Kenneth House is a fourth year Television and Film Studies major studying at California State University, Los Angeles. He applied for 9 other internship programs before getting accepted at KVCR. Kenneth’s career goal is to become a Cinematographer (Director of Photography). As a Production intern at KVCR-TV, Kenneth prepares scripts for businessmen and human resource managers to read during filming of a documentary called ‘American Graduate’, where businessmen and human resources directors give tips to recent high school graduates trying to find work.
Erik Escobar is a third year Arts Management major studying at Whittier College. Erik’s career goal is to become a Marketing Director or a Business Consultant in the Theatrical industry. Currently, Erik has a part-time internship at Universal Music as a Lifestyle Marketing intern and at LA Commons as a Cultural Arts Programming intern.
Q: What did you learn over the summer through your internship? Did you learn any concepts or practices relating to your major?
Kenneth: Little things like tele-prompting and set & scriptwriting for commercials.
Erik: I learned about visual arts through my internship at LA Commons.
Q: Did your internship help you to build on your weak points?
Kenneth: The internship has taught me how to move along with production and post-production in a more realistic manner.
Erik: I’m bad at math; working with a non-profit I found that accounting and business math is essential. My internship has shown me how important it is to be able to set and interpret budgets.
Q: Did you build any strengths over the summer through your internship.
Kenneth: Learning to ask for what I want. I learned not to wait for opportunities — in essence, being proactive.
Erik: The biggest takeaway was how to run a non-profit organization and what role I want to play in a non-profit. I believe non-profits need strong management and communication and I felt LA Commons lacked these traits.
Q: What are your plans for the Fall season? What would you like to learn in class that was not covered in your internship?
Kenneth: I would like to learn how to do the set up for green screens; they did not show me how to do green screen set-ups at KVCR-TV. Learning to do green screen set-ups would help me to create unique background environments for filming purposes.
Erik: In the fall season I will be interning with Universal Music and ABC/Disney. In class I hope to learn more business skills. In the past I focused more on Arts and Humanities – I am now looking to get classroom perspective of business. Also, I would like to learn more about business finance as well as creative marketing in grassroot organizations.