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Upcoming Internship

July 27th, 2005 by Laurie

As I am counting down the days to the end my college career ( well at least classes) I become overwhelmed with feelings of sadness, excitement and nervousness. I will not be graduating in August like the rest of my classmates… I will be interning. I meet with my internship “mentors” this Friday. As I have already posted previously, I am interning with Comfort Care Hospice. When I first tell people where I am interning, I get varied reactions. What I don’t think people realize is that I will not ever come in contact with patients….. I am actually working with the Marketing/PR aspect of the company. I didn’t realize exactly what hospices were until I found this internship. Now I am recognizing them everywhere I go and realizing what a competitive market this is. Greenville is a very small town in Alabama yet we now have two hospice services. The competition is a large homehealth and hospice service that is known and used statewide. Comfort Care on the other hand is fairly small and new but is rapidly growing. The fact that it is small is intimidating, but exciting. I believe this leaves a lot of room for new ideas and opportunities. I have many ideas and am sure I will have even more once I begin my internship. My biggest fear though is expressing these ideas and then coming off as overly aggressive or a “know it all”. I feel as though this internship will give me the chance to use all of the things I have been taught in my classes. My biggest question is how do I express these ideas and suggestions without being offensive?…… after all I am intern.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 11:35 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to 'Upcoming Internship'

  1. Zon Says:
    July 29th, 2005 at 9:01 pm

    Ah, the internship. As someone who’s worked in media for about 15 years now, let me pass on some advice for the budding communications types who may stumble across this.

    1) Work. By this, I mean get a job in the field you want to work in when you’re in college or soon after (you know, like an internship). Especially in communications, relevant work experience matters much, much more than grades, extracurriculars, sororities, etc. It’s all I look at when I’m hiring. Get it early and get ahead.

    2) Listen. If you’re working with or for someone who’s been in the field, they have experience to offer. Don’t come in as a know-it-all. But …

    3) Be valuable. Pick your moments, but when you have something to offer, offer it. Nothing is worse than an intern who doesn’t take initiative. That person ends up with busy work.

    And above all, this should be a stepping stone. Try to figure out what you want to do with your life, and work to shape your role there to get you along. You’re out of college - nobody’s looking out for you anymore. Except yourself.

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