By Ashlyn Montgomery
We are young, eager, and have the world at our feet. However we will fail without goals and internal motivation.
Internships may not always come easy. Sometimes they may fall into your lap because you know someone who knows someone. That is what happened to me the first two summers after my freshman and sophomore year of college. The other alternative is that you find an internship because you worked your butt off to get it on your own through networking. This is how I got my final internship at LaSalle Network this past summer. Either way obtaining an internship will be one of the greatest things in disguise to happen to you; but only if you pour your whole self into it.
My first internship was at Lids Headquarters in Indianapolis as a Human Resource intern. My second internship was at Beam Longest and Neff in Indianapolis as a Marketing intern. My final internship was in downtown Chicago at LaSalle Network as a Recruiting intern. Not a single one of these internships were more important than the other. All three of them taught me what its like to work out in the working world and provided me with a countless number of skills that will stay with me forever.
There are several valuable lessons I have learned from these internships but there are a few that I would like to share with the people who will be searching for internships in the near future. Never stop networking. You can never network enough. If you feel like an annoyance, you are not. It shows you are eager.
Once you get the internship, work as hard as you possibly can. Give it a 100% and then more. Ask questions, take notes, and do more then what the minimum is asked of you. If you do these things you will stand out, and your name will not be forgotten. I have a great deal of confidence in each of you. Now all that is left is you having that same confidence within your self. Trust me, the world is yours, so take it!
Ashlyn Montgomery is a senior PR major at Valparaiso University, where she serves as president of the Valpo PRSSA chapter. Ashlyn has had three internships during her college experience.