| Summer 2003 journalism internshipsThis Web page provides frequently updated information and instructions for students enrolled in JOU 396 Journalism Internship for the summer of 2003. If you're one of those interns, plan on visiting this site soon after the 1st and 15th of each month to check for the times of meetings, new feedback assignments and other course-related updates.
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Please schedule your internship wrap-up session.
Individually scheduled wrap-up meetings should be held during the week of August 11, unless you have made arrangements to extend your internship beyond the end of the summer session and will be receiving a grade of "I" at this time.
Ideally, your wrap-up session should occur after your site supervisor has completed your evaluation and discussed it with you, but we can work around this if necessary. Evaluation forms for the supervisors of all internships ending on or before August 15 were mailed directly to the supervisors during the week of July 28. Forms for extended internships will be mailed at appropriate times later in the month.
Wrap-up discussions usually take about a half-hour. Be sure to bring:
To schedule your wrap-up session, send me an e-mail or call my office suggesting two or three days/times that would be convenient for you. I'll respond as quickly as possible accepting one of those times or suggesting an alternate one. Afternoons are best for me, but I can be available as early as 9 a.m. or as late as 10 p.m., if necessary. Monday, Aug. 11 is already fairly heavily booked, so later in the week would be better.
Don't burn any bridges leaving your internship.
In the waning days of an internship it can be tempting to relax and let things slide since it's almost over. But, be careful not to do that. You've been working all summer to get the most out of your internship and to impress the people with whom you've worked. Don't spoil that now. Don't give them a reason to think you're letting things slide or that you no longer care about quality. Use these final days to strengthen their impressions of your competence and to solidify your future relationship with them as professional contacts.
If you didn't tell your collegues about your career interests and aspirations when I suggested it last month, do it now. And, if you don't already have complete contact information for each of them, get it now.
Remember what Paula Kollstedt, director of communication for GE Aircraft Engines, said in the job-hunting video: "We communicators are a small, close-knit group. We talk to each other frequently, and we share lots of information, especially about jobs and job-seekers."
If you've taken the time to cement your relationships with these people and if you've applied yourself and done good work during your internship, you should be well on your way toward getting positive word-of-mouth publicity. Don't slack off and weaken it at this point. And, above all, don't spoil a positive impression by venting your frustrations or telling your supervisor "everything that's wrong with this stupid internship." [The name of the intern who made this statement has been deleted to protect the guilty.]
The unnamed student above and a couple of others I've dealt with over the years thought it would feel good to tell their supervisors off and let them know what "all the interns really thought of them." So, considering it a farewell gesture and assuming they'd never again deal with the people from their internships, they shot their mouths off before leaving. I'll cite just two examples.
The first had a paid internship in the public relations department of a medium-sized company. At the end of her internship she wrote a vitriolic letter to the CEO of the company (someone whom she had only met once during her internship) in which she complained about all the shortcomings of the public relations director who had been her intern supervisor. She was particularly critical of the PR director for making changes in news releases written by interns and for not giving interns more professional responsibilities. She said it was insulting to have her writing changed like that. In addition to responding directly to the intern, the CEO sent angry letters to the Dean and NKU's then-president Dr. Leon Boothe, both of whom apologized to the CEO and expressed their outrage to the intern, the faculty coordinator, and the department chair. It was not a happy time in the Communication Department, and NKU has never had another intern at that organization. As for the former intern, the last I heard she was still waiting tables at one of Cincinnati's finer restaurants. After graduating the semester after her internship, she spent more than two years trying to land a communication job somewhere in Cincinnati. During that time, there were at least a half-dozen cases I know about and possibly more I don't know about in which she got as far as the interview stage but was then turned down for unexplained reasons. She finally stopped applying for communication jobs and simply stayed working at the restaurant where she had worked while going to school.
The second situation occurred more recently and involved an unpaid intern doing desktop publishing and promotional tasks for a non-profit organization. Several times during his internship he complained to anyone, on campus or at the internship site, who would listen that he was doing "trivial clerical work" that didn't require a college degree. He often added that he didn't see how anyone could be happy doing such meaningless work. His last day at the internship site he loudly told his supervisor how "degrading and useless" his whole internship had been. Rather than getting angry, the supervisor reportedly said he was sorry the intern felt that way and wished him well wherever he went. More than a year later, when the by-then-NKU-graduate went for a job-interview at a totally unrelated for-profit company, he was surprised to find he would be interviewed by two people who had been his co-workers during his internship. One of the first things they asked was how could the meaningless work he did as an intern possibly have prepared him to work there. Although the rest of the interview seemed painfully long and unbearably hot to the former intern, it was actually quite short, very cold, and totally unsuccessful.
The moral of these stories is simple: don't be an arrogant jerk. At the time they did it, both of these students felt pretty smug about what they had done. In fact, the second one frequently bragged about how he had told off his site supervisor and how the supervisor had "apologized" to him. But, in retrospect, I doubt either one would act the same way if they could do it over again.
No matter how good and how satisfying you think it might feel, it rarely pays to burn bridges as you're leaving an organization, whether you're leaving after an internship, after a job, or after an informational visit. This is especially true in the Cincinnati area, where the entire business community is fairly close-knit, and it's becoming even more true within the communications professions as they blend and meld.
Leave your internship on a positive note, and remember that last impressions can be almost as important to your future as first impressions are.
| Important upcoming dates August 11 - first day for wrap-up sessions; August 15 - last day for wrap-up sessions; August 18 - final grades are due.
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Journalism internships overview | Dr. Turney's home page |  Send e-mail to all interns via jouinterns.
Job Hunters Bible; What Color Is Your Parachute? |
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