Attend class. Read. Study. Cram. Test. Repeat. Students in college are familiar with all, or most, of these tactics that are carried out week after week to ensure that graduation day hands them a diploma. While the piece of paper obtained during commencement declares to the world that the student rightly earned his or her position in their career place, there is one element of a college education that prepares students more than textbooks and study guides alone: internship.  Taking phone calls, making coffee and running copies are the stereotypical duties of a student intern, but two Manchester seniors prove that, if a student chooses wisely, internships allow for much more, and build confidence for the future.

             
Tim Polakowski, double majoring in social work and Spanish, is currently residing in Chicago, interning through the Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture. His real work takes place at Dr. Jorge Prieto Family Medical Clinic, a county outpatient clinic located in a Hispanic neighborhood. “I do a lot,” Polakowski said. “In the beginning, I mainly shadowed a social worker, but now I am meeting with my own clients.”

             
Krystal Poe, an art major with a focus in graphic design, recently completed a month-long internship at Shindigz, the world’s first online party outlet store, and Stumps, which focuses on prom favors. The two businesses, located in South Whitley, offered Poe a position working with graphic design, where she was able to immediately begin working with website design, creating website tablets, editing photos and also working with product customization.  “I gained more technical skills in computer programs [such as] Photoshop and InDesign for my future job,” Poe said.

             
Neither Polakowski nor Poe received pay for their internships, but agree that the experience is compensation enough. Many responsibilities and skills acquired with an internship simply are not available inside of the classroom. “Memorization of skills and theories is one thing,” Polakowski said.  “Applying them to real clients is a completely different story.”  A change of view may also be a benefit of interning. “Chicago is not anything like North Manchester,” Polakowski added.

             
Poe concurs that an unpaid internship is still rewarding. “[After completing my internship] I was given a job,” Poe said. “It provides something after graduation [and] gives you a great advantage over others.” She also added that taking part in an internship helps students to realize that they may need to seek additional knowledge in their chosen field, and points they should learn they should learn before obtaining a real job. Poe notes that there is always more to learn. “It takes several tries and failures to get somewhere,” she said.

             
Both Polakowski and Poe conclude that working with an internship has strengthened their desire to continue on their career path, and at the same time, helped them consider their future even more. “While [the internship] strengthens my desire to stay in social work, it has made me seriously reconsider what exactly I want to do within the field,” Polakowski said.  Poe’s internship helped her to narrow down what she wants to do in the huge field of art.  “It made me want to create images only,” she said.

             
Typical techniques of obtaining a deep understanding of one’s future career, such as reading, analyzing, studying and memorizing may prove to be successful after school.  However, gaining an experience with an organization similar to one a student wishes to work with in the future does not only provide additional knowledge that a classroom cannot offer by the way of hands-on experience, it may also serve as a wake-up call, helping a student to realize what he or she needs to seek more of for a particular job, or perhaps open up a door that has not yet been considered. In any case, a resume always looks better when it includes internship information, even if coffee and copying machines are all a student works with.

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