What can you get out of an internship?

An internship can benefit you in many more ways than just one. An internship can help you with your CV and experience, which is very important. An internship can help boost your confidence and self-esteem. But something to keep in mind is that an internship can show whether a career you’ve always thought about is really what you’ve always dreamed it would be… or maybe you were wrong?

When starting an internship, it is common to be nervous. But the right guidance (and hopefully a team of people who want to help you) can get you to quickly be a part of the action and feel like a valuable member of the team. If your goal is a career in business for example, you can watch employees hustle about, pitch their ideas, cold call the media, write press releases, brainstorm in meetings, and do so much more. It can be like a front-row seat to your potential future. Not only will you have an opportunity to watch and observe, but at some point someone it will give you a gentle push into the driver’s seat.

A good internship will give you hands-on experience. You might be asked to try your hand at writing a blog post or two on your own, or maybe to organize large promotional packs. You might even be entrusted with a media ground call. These are all tasks you would have never had the opportunity to do in your dorm or inside the classroom.

What you will gain from your internship as a whole is knowledge: as a starter, you will probably go into your internship knowing nothing about business and leave feeling like you know everything. An internship can give you a well-rounded hands-on education that you wouldn’t receive otherwise. After serving an internship, you should be much more focused and motivated, as though someone gave you a crystal ball so you’re now able to look directly into your future. An internship can show you what your life could be like after education, and that can be inspiring.

If worse comes to worse, sometimes it happens that the internship you were so hungry for turns out to be awful. Every student is different and has his own interests and goals. If you end up with an internship in a field that you don’t love, that’s OK too. You’ll still learn more about that field and you’ll know that it’s not something you want to pursue after graduation. It’s better to find out now than later. Think of it this way: you’re spending time figuring out your future now so you don’t have to waste time doing it after you graduate. You can turn this into a learning experience and still walk away with a great CV booster and professional contacts. And remember, people change jobs every three years on average, so you never know where these professional contacts will end up.

Everyone has to start somewhere. When you’re talking to successful people, you’ll find that many started with an internship.