While sitting in my dorm after a long day, I decided to be what college kids like to call “productive,” but instead of flipping through countless pages in my text book or fumbling through my agenda book to find work, I decided to search the world wide web for internships. To my dismay, although I fit much of what the requirements were to apply for them, the one requirement I lacked was that I was freshmen in college.
Apparently, places such as CBS, NBC, C-SPAN, WJLA, the federal government, as well as countless other organizations and businesses, often times avoid freshmen like it’s the plague. I can’t even remember how many times while sifting through possible internships seeing phrases such as: “available for juniors and seniors,” “must be a junior or senior,” “at least a sophomore in an accredited university,” “must be a senior with pass experience,” as if being a junior or senior guarantees your maturity and experience.
After hours of searching on many websites with no luck, I thought to myself, “What about freshman?” Must our entire job market consist of fast food giants such as McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Checkers, Taco Bell, or amusement parks like Six Flags, Kings Dominion, Disney Parks, Hershey Park, and let’s not forget about department stores such as Forever 21, Nordstrom, Claire’s, Charlotte Russe, or Foot Locker.
Although these jobs allow you to cultivate communication skills as well as problem solving skills, if you are not planning on a career in hospitality or marketing, these jobs will not be able to suffice the experience needed in your field of study. Luckily, I have been able to come across a few organizations and business that do!
So, here’s to the ambitious freshman:
- NPR Internship: offers experience working in music, news, as well as engineering.
- Summer Wildlife Intern: Wildcare Inc: offers experience caring for injured and orphaned wild life.
- Governor Larry Hogan Intern Leadership Program: offers work experiences based on interest as well as understanding of state government.
- Boost Media Internship: develops your writing capability as well as marketing.
- Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Volunteer Intern: allows for you to come up with blog posts as well as conduct research