In my last two columns, I wrote about the positive impacts internship programs can have on individual students, companies, and the economic and workforce development of a community. The first of those two columns focused on two local internship programs for high school students, while the second discussed the value of Augusta University’s Hull College of Business, requiring its students to complete an internship prior to graduation. In my next two columns, I will conclude my series on internships by sharing the stories of my older daughter, Audie and my younger daughter, AJ and her boyfriend, Thomas, showing how their internship experiences have enhanced their early career prospects. I think these stories will provide very good examples of how internships are invaluable to young people.
Unfortunately, for Baby Boomers like myself, internships were neither encouraged nor readily available during our teens and early twenties. My first “job” was delivering newspapers, and then during high school and summers home from college, I worked in low-skilled jobs such as fast food, grounds maintenance, bar cleanup, and moving inventory in retail. These jobs did not help me in my future career other than to motivate me to work hard in college so I would not have to work such jobs in the future. Fortunately, times have changed for the better in terms of internships, so the young people close to me have been able to use internships to help determine and launch their early careers. Here is the first of those stories.
My older daughter, Audie, was different than most 16-year-olds. At that age, she knew that she wanted to pursue a career in sports administration. At that time, while working at Kennesaw State University (KSU) as an academic administrator and faculty member, I also had a role overseeing the intersection of athletics and academics at KSU. Because of that role, my family had access to what it took to run a collegiate athletic program, and what she saw as very appealing to Audie. Due to her keen interest, KSU’s Athletics Department put together a “job shadowing” program for her for a couple of weeks during the summer, before her junior year of high school. Given her interest and enthusiasm, they invited her to be an unpaid “intern” the following summer.
I was glad that she was being availed such an opportunity, as level jobs in athletics were typically low-paying, non-glamorous and hard work. Some of that was evident when she came from her first day of internship, tired and dirty from cleaning the arena floor at KSU. I expected that she might be discouraged, learning what her career choice was really like early on. However, when I asked her how things went, she replied, “I love it! These are my people.” She found that the KSU Athletics Department was full of people who, like her, loved supporting athletics and were good “team players.” She excelled in that internship by working hard and pitching in wherever she could. By the end of that summer, she had played key roles in managing equipment inventory and distributing season tickets for KSU’s inaugural football season. She did so well that she helped them out again during the summer, before she left for college.
A number of good things came out of the unpaid internship, which is popular in fields like sports and entertainment, for Audie. First, she learned that she really loved the work and the people in this career field, which helped confirm her choice of a college major – sports management with a minor in business, and the career she hoped to pursue. Second, she already started building a network, which is important in the sports field where people move around often. Finally, KSU’s athletics director reached out to the athletic department at Georgia Southern (where Audie was going to attend college that fall) which led to her being hired as a paid student assistant as soon as she started school.
Her time at Georgia Southern (GS) included over three years as a student assistant, which was very similar to being an intern, along with being an actual intern during her last semester as a student. Her Georgia Southern experience added more to her resume and again, further built her network. Her internship experiences at KSU and GS led to an opportunity to interview for a post-graduate internship at the University of Notre Dame, which she was about to be offered when COVID hit. While COVID derailed her plans for the time being, it did not deter her. Although jobs in college sports were almost non-existent, she was able to work as a volunteer intern at Augusta University (AU), thanks to legendary athletics director, Clint Bryant. At AU, she was able to further widen her athletics administration skill set, while also again expanding her network.
In late November 2020, the combination of her network (contacts from KSU and GS) and experience developed during her internships led to an interview with the Atlanta Braves that led to a job starting in January 2021. Two and one-half years later, she is enjoying a great start to her career in sports with the Braves.
We can take a multitude of lessons from Audie’s experiences on how internships can propel a young person’s career. These lessons include:
– Internships can show you whether a career field and academic major is one in which you will like and potentially have success.
– Internships provide you an opportunity to demonstrate to yourself and others your ability to do good work.
– Internships are a great way to build and develop a network that can lead to future career opportunities.
In my next column, I will provide you the internship stories of my other daughter, AJ, and her boyfriend, Thomas, which will demonstrate other ways in which internships can help young people make good career choices, including pursuing their “dream job.”
