Advertisements
I helped out with an intern training seminar in my office. Two editors and I walked a roomful of college interns through the process of reporting a story, from doing research to interviewing sources and writing the article.
The interns all looked eager and excited. I thought of my own internship here, in the summer of 1997, when I worked in the Washington, D.C. bureau. Highlights of that summer: my first business trip; a story I wrote on the diplomatic issues behind the global shrimp trade; the experience of wandering around the capital with a reporter's notebook, looking for stories.
Like me, many of my colleagues here are former Wall Street Journal or Dow Jones Newswires interns; I came back after a decade working as a reporter and editor elsewhere.
If you're lucky enough to get a paid internship, like our interns, you might be able to save some money, although you will likely have to pay for housing. Many internships, however, are unpaid.
Raising children is increasingly expensive for families. And parents who send their children to college can add a significant sum to the total. The College Board estimates that in 2011-2012, annual average tuition and fees were $28,500 at 4-year private (non-profit) colleges, while annual room and board was $10,089.
And the rising cost of college has also changed the relationship between a student's summer job and tuition payments. In the past, a college student who worked long hours in the summers could count on paying at least part of her tuition, enough to make a dent in the check her parents would have to write.
These days, unless your summer job is akin to starting Facebook, there's little chance you can foot a semester of full-time schooling yourself. (Of course, many students do attend college part-time while working to support themselves, often taking additional years to complete their degrees.)
But an internship can at least provide a real-world taste of a profession to help confirm (or dispel) a kid's interest in a particular career. It can also provide all-important contacts for the post-college job search. For parents of college students, it's a matter of steering your child in the right direction. Encourage her to visit her university's career-services office to see who's recruiting for interns on campus. (This process usually starts early in the fall semester.)
Many campus student groups will also host recruiting visits, or may have a bulletin board or website where information about related internships is posted.
I was lucky to get internships for two consecutive summers at newspapers (including this one) that recruited at our college paper.
