Does the job field for writing seem restricted? It might seem that way, but it isn’t. Use these job and internship stories to explore everything the writing field has to offer!
As a freshman, I thought that I was sentenced to scrubbing dishes in the dining hall for my next four years at Cedarville. I listened to upper-level Professional Writing and Information Design students talk about client projects and job offers from organizations. I knew that an internship would eventually come, but I had no idea where to start.
I made significant progress, yet I ended up back where I started. How is that possible? In the fall of 2000, when I stepped on the Cedarville University campus as a freshman for Getting Started weekend, my parents made me get my picture taken with the campus mascot, known as “the bee”, because I was too nervous and embarrassed. I was uncovering my interests and gaining my footing as a young, independent adult.
“Are you still interested in serving with Samaritan’s Purse? And are you willing to go to our office in Canada?” I had no idea Samaritan’s Purse even had an office in Canada and no clue what my position would be if I accepted the internship offer.
It was my sophomore year, and the first day of a class called Professional Portfolio Development. The professor informed us that we would be participating in mock interviews: first with our fellow classmates, then with some of PWID’s board members, both on the phone and in person. I was 17 years old. I had only ever worked online, aside from my job at a bakery. I felt about as inexperienced as one could be.
My editing internship at an economics office this summer required that I dabble in free market philosophy. I had been trying to read one meaty article, scratching through the pages with underlines and question marks and brief abstractions of the text. But what I found at the end of this scholarly essay was a line of music, of rhythm, timbre, pitch.
In that moment as I stood in front of my professor, I knew I was over-committing. He offered me the opportunity to work on a professional client project. This specific client was the nursing department at Cedarville University, and I would be creating a template for their quarterly newsletter.