Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Productive vacations
An internship is a good way to experience the world of work and to explore your future options. Anuradha Samarajiva finds out more
Ah, the elusive intern: a migratory species that comes with the vacation period and usually doesn’t stick around for too long. During that time, he or she finds an office space to inhabit, doing anything from making coffee to writing reports. And then after a few months or weeks, the trainee is out of there, moving on to another year of school, or maybe even a real job.

What possesses these interns to spend their vacations working? An internship is a hands-on training course where the motivations are gaining experience and making contacts. When a student does go out looking for that impressive job, an internship makes a difference on a resume. It shows potential employers that the applicant has on-the-job experience and knowledge, advantages that can’t come from sitting in a classroom. Even if they’re not looking for a job, teenagers will take up internships because in the world of work, they go a long way.

Jananie (16) interned for a month at a private hospital because she wants to go into medicine, and “universities in the States and the U.K. like it if you have experience.” By doing internships like this one, she can show she’s focused on medicine. She got to walk around with the doctors, see operations, and even help out with minor tasks. The work has made her more excited about doing medicine, and happy that she was able to “experience a bit more of life outside.”

Not all interns are as certain about their future as Jananie. Some use the training as a chance to experiment and decide what kind of work they’d like to do (or completely avoid) later in life. Eustace (19) spent his vacation at a library, shelving books and working at the checkout counter. The experience hasn’t made him want to become a professional librarian anytime soon, but he did get to “learn exactly how the library works” and even earn some money. “Beside,” he says, “I didn’t want to just sit around the whole holiday.”

Internships can really take you places as in the case of Priya Jaikumar, now an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, who spent a year helping the author Vikram Seth on his book A Suitable Boy. A lot of research went into the mammoth story, which is full of anecdotes about everything from mangoes to politics. Priya helped with research and read the work in progress. She didn’t think of the job as the beginning of a writing career. Instead, “At the time I was still exploring possibilities, and an adventure seemed better than getting slotted into some set upwardly mobile routine.”

Banks are usually a hotbed of young trainees, and HSBC is no exception. Charles, a banking assistant at the HSBC Human Resources Department, says that there’s a time period when they take interns, and they usually have four to five trainees at a time. They do whatever work is required, like marketing and various projects. Permanent employment is not guaranteed, but “after training we give them a letter saying they’ve completed this work to the best of their ability.” He says the internships benefit everyone: “It’s good for them, and we get some work done as well.”

There’s also the question of the kind of work that they do. Or there are cases like Jason (17), whose biggest complaint is not about the quality of work, but that he didn’t get enough of it. Finding appropriate work for young trainees can be the biggest challenge for a company. “At times it was constructive, but sometimes I was just bored,” he says.

Through internships many young people learn the rules of the workplace, and get the chance to meet people who can help them in the future. Even more, they start to figure out what they want, or really don’t want, to do for the rest of their lives. Even though interns only hang around for a few months, they still get to make a mark. And if you really do miss them, you know there’ll always be an enthusiastic, new bunch the next year.

Top