I've been thinking a lot about internships and how they should function in order for students to get real knowledge (and experience) in the type of field they are pursing.

This is not meant for interns, this is meant for the managers of interns.

Let's start off with what an internship is suppose to be. An internship is to give a student an inside look into a particular career field. For myself that was an entertainment publicist. I wanted to work as a publicist in some kind of entertainment field-- TV, film, Pub, etc.

The idea behind this is I would speaking to people doing the job and get a slice of what their daily work life is like.

I'm going to mention here that i've had two internships when i was in college, one was amazing (my first internship) and one was terrible (my second).

So what was the difference? Well it wasn't less "grunt work" as many would like to believe. What it was was the publicists who i worked with during my first one actively involved me in EVERYTHING. If it was a decision on a mailer, i had an opinion.

If it was strategizing a press junket, I was involved. If it was talking to press and engaging with them on the content, I was there. I was not shunted off as an assistant or someone "not necessary to speak to." They made me feel relevant and answered all my Qs & engaged w/ me.

Compare that to my next internship-- who had me spend almost my entire internship moving their newspaper storage to another office and filing it. I asked if i could shadow a publicist-- no they dont' need you in the way. I asked if i could help pull press clips-- no thank you.

A few publicists attempted to engage with me and the one i direct reported to felt that was an insult to them that I attempted to work with others in the dept.

Managers- if you have interns, you should be investing in them. Your job is teach them about THIS job that you do.

If you can't do this, simply engage with them and allow them to see the work and perhaps be a part of it, you don't have any business having interns. You are wasting their time.

Interns should not be some cheap labor you can get every couple of months (or free even)...

It is a way to show students what to expect. yes it can be awful at times-- you don't think i had moments like that in my first one? But it needs to be educational. you can't say that students need "experience" to get a job with you, but then deny them that experience.

I got the opportunity to hire interns at my one of early PR jobs, and I took this very seriously. To the point that I would walk to every single Publicist (as an assistant btw) and ask them to please work with the interns. It's not my assistant role they are striving for

And sometimes students won't take the internship seriously-- but ya know what? Thats on them. You did your part at least. You can tell interns "you get what you want out of an internship" but it's a two-way street.

End of my rant.

Also, UGH typo.... right out the gate.

PURSUING*