Re: Why Internships Indeed

[Nancy Hayes <nancyh -at- PMAFIRE -dot- INEL -dot- GOV>]

The company I work for routinely hires college students as
summer interns.  (I don't know the details on how they
do this--I've just worked w/ some of the summer hires.)
They were paid interns, and if I had to take a guess, I'd
say they were making about sixty-percent of an entry-level
salary.  No benefits.  Still, much more than they could
have made at McDonalds.

At least in the documentation department, we've had very
good luck w/ these students. They learn some practical technical
writing (enough to scare most of them out of ever wanting to
do it as a career, unfortunately).  Most of these students
have been engineering or science students.  At the least,
they aren't going to join the ranks of the Any-idiot-can-
write majority.

From that standpoint, the internship was successful.  They
learned a new skill, and we'll have a few more engineers
and scientists out there who appreciate how difficult
the profession really is.

Sometimes, I think the problem is (or was) that not enough
students are aware of the possiblity of an internship.  I
never heard of one when I was in college--and by rights,
the English department should have heard about any
writing internships.

Hope this helps.  Just my addition to the general confusion.

-- Nancy
--
--N. L. Hayes                   DISCLAIMER:  Personal opinion, only.
  nancyh -at- pmafire -dot- inel -dot- gov         Does not represent company policy.