Intern­ing has become a part of col­lege so ubiq­ui­tous it ranks up with a capella groups and major/minor dec­la­ra­tions in its importance—and for good rea­son. Intern­ships are a great way to explore poten­tial career paths and gain solid work expe­ri­ence and, to be per­fectly hon­est, expected to be on entry-level job appli­cants’ résumés.

Intern­ships can be part-time or full-time and are often unpaid, so many stu­dents seek aca­d­e­mic credit for their time instead. A bit of con­tro­versy has recently emerged about this as some states are con­cerned that unpaid intern­ships vio­late fed­eral labor laws. My per­sonal opin­ion is that, extreme sit­u­a­tions aside, intern­ships remain an excel­lent way for stu­dents to gain expe­ri­ence and employ­ers to ben­e­fit from ener­getic, will­ing assis­tance (But if you find your­self fetch­ing cof­fee and dryclean­ing for eight hours a day, that’s a dif­fer­ent story, just for the record).

My first intern­ship was the sum­mer after my fresh­man year of col­lege when I interned for my local news­pa­per at home. It may sound like small pota­toes, but I learned a great deal about jour­nal­is­tic writ­ing by com­pos­ing five pub­lished arti­cles. Sure, they were about artists vis­it­ing the local art cen­ter and pro­files of inter­est­ing peo­ple in town, but the research/interview and writ­ing skills I learned through guid­ance from the pro­fes­sional edi­to­r­ial staff became indis­pens­able. Never under­es­ti­mate the ben­e­fits of hav­ing on-the-record pub­lished writ­ing clips, no mat­ter how local the pub­li­ca­tion may be.

As I was still explor­ing jour­nal­ism at the time, I pur­sued a full-time sum­mer intern­ship at NBC 10 Philadel­phia for the sum­mer between my sopho­more and junior years of col­lege. Even though I was kind of already mov­ing away from plan­ning a jour­nal­is­tic career, I learned so much from this expe­ri­ence as well. Work­ing in a busy, fast-paced news­room was an excel­lent way to develop a high level of focus and con­cen­tra­tion that has proven use­ful for school as well as other pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences. Intern­ships are not just about the office, com­pany, or even field of work at hand; they’re about learn­ing widely rel­e­vant work skills and learn­ing about who we are in the work­place. For this rea­son, I think that it’s per­fectly okay—especially so early in col­lege stu­dents’ bud­ding careers—to take intern­ships that aren’t nec­es­sar­ily a per­fect fit or the most glam­orous employer in town. At this point, it’s sim­ply about learning.

Going to col­lege in Los Ange­les, I was a tad lim­ited in my off-campus mobil­ity since L.A. is pretty much a car town. When I did have an intern­ship doing the school year, for Grass­roots Cam­paigns, Inc., it took a great deal of effort to fina­gle bor­row­ing a friend’s car on a reg­u­lar basis. That can get pretty annoy­ing to deal with, which is why off-site intern­ships are an excel­lent way to deal with the trans­porta­tion issue. Off-site intern­ships are often research intern­ships that stu­dents can do from the com­fort of a library or dorm room—I’ve had sev­eral class­mates intern for non­prof­its and research orga­ni­za­tions by com­plet­ing research assign­ments on their own and com­mu­ni­cat­ing via e-mail and phone. It’s a great way to solve trans­porta­tion and dis­tance problems.

I’m not push­ing col­lege stu­dents to freak out about the future and jump into the stress of pro­fes­sional explo­ration. Intern­ships are sim­ply a use­ful way to enrich the learn­ing that already hap­pens in college—do you agree? Or should pro­fes­sional pur­suits wait until a lit­tle later? What kinds of jobs or intern­ships have you done dur­ing college?