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Again, I expect this depends on what state you are talking about. It
probably even depends on what college you're going to. It probably
even depends on what department of the college you are interning
through.
My own internship was in, obviously, Michigan. At that time (I think
it was 1979) my college had no specifically technical writing
curriculum, and I didn't even know what technical writing was. I only
knew it had the awful word "technical" in it, so forget that.
I did a journalism internship. The Journalism Department at my
college set it up and told me when and where. That's all. I worked
for free, and I paid the college for that internship just like I'd pay
them for any other class. I worked, probably, 30 hours a week and
made my own hours pretty much.
I found out after that that it's really pretty easy to walk into a
weekly newspaper office and get an assignment to write a news article.
Back then I think I was paid 25 cents an inch, which was almost
volunteer but not quite.
