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Rethinking internships: Part I: Mentoring out the mundane
Fast Company
Reid Carr
Many of us remember our internship programs during college as little more than a "check in the box" toward graduation credit and, if we were lucky to get a paid one, some pocket change to cover the occasional t-shirt purchase at the university book store. Back in my college days as an advertising major, I rarely heard of any fellow classmate ever receiving valuable hands-on experience while interning at an agency, other than being a small fly on the wall watching the full-time staff members at work.
The problem is that many organizations view undergraduate students as under qualified to do more than administrative "busy work," and that the only option, therefore, is for them to give them the opportunity to simply see how the so-called professionals go about their day-to-day operations. Herein lies the dilemma -- companies that believe college interns are ill-prepared to handle the more complex taskings within their organization create this self-fulfilling prophecy by NOT integrating them more into their process.
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