by Evi Arthur
Senior, Journalism Major
Over the summer I interned at St. Louis Magazine.
Desperate for an internship and sick of the lack of response I was getting from all the other publications I’d applied to, I emailed one of the editors of the magazine asking about an internship program and sent along a resume, a cover letter, and a few clips.
She responded within a day letting me know that they’d be happy to have me—the best response I had gotten from my entire internship search.
That whole summer—instead of spending my time lying on the beach or going to the mall with my friends (I’m not exactly sure what other college kids do in their free time)—I spent my Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays writing articles, interviewing sources, fact-checking information, and keeping up with the weekend events in the city.
And I really loved it. I felt like I wasn’t wasting my summer by doing silly things like relaxing (kidding) and making new friends (half-kidding), I was making myself more marketable to employers after graduation. And isn’t that what summer break is really all about?
Although the internship was a wonderful experience where I grew as a writer and a journalist, I also learned that writing for a city magazine wasn’t the field I really wanted to go into after all. This is the hidden value of an internship – by doing the job, you might learn that you want something different.
I always saw myself working for a city magazine after graduation. I saw it as a great jumping off point into bigger, more-prominent magazines, —and I still do—but interning at St. Louis Magazine helped me to realize that this wasn’t the type of jounal I wanted to write for. It was fun, but I felt like I wanted to be able to write about more serious, non-local news and working at a city magazine wouldn’t allow me to do that.
And that’s, frankly, one of the best things I think an internship can teach you. I’m happy to have been able to figure that out myself before being on my own and needing to find a steady job and being uncertain about what I want.
This summer I learned a lot about being proactive and the power of experiential learning. If I had not been proactive and emailed the editor, I probably would not have gotten the internship. And although I learned through it that I didn’t want to go into this particular area of journalism, I think that was a very valuable conclusion to come to and it has been helping me narrow down my options for next semester’s internship search.
So always strive to find those out-of-school experiences that will teach you something valuable that you might not learn in class. It could save you some time and confusion after graduation.