Internships

If you're reading this, chances are you're in school and like most students have a part-time job. You're working around a full load of classes and your job's set hours. It's easy to get stressed out with all the busyness. Wouldn't it be nice if your job worked around your schedule? Or maybe you'd like to lighten your school load and drop a class? With an internship these things are possible and provide many more valuable opportunities as well.

An internship is a chance to receive academic credit and hands on learning outside of the classroom. Not just outside of the classroom, but at your everyday, convenient job. Internships can last a semester, a summer, a year, or longer. Even your current job may be used as an internship. Most internships offer very flexible hours that usually work around your school schedule. In fact, thousands of local organizations offer paid internships with flexible schedules to work around your schedule. You can even replace an elective course in your major with an internship. The number of hours an intern is required to work usually depends on the employer and the intern. There are some requirements that you must fulfill upon applying for an internship. Those requirements will vary from your major department, but are going to include GPA, attaining a certain status in school and hours working.

The opportunities an internship offers are indispensable. Practical hands-on work experience is a major plus and always look good on resumes. Also, if your not too sure about what you want to do after graduation, you can get an internship in a certain field and see if it's a good match for you. While interning, you have a huge chance to network with people that can possibly be helpful later on in life. The networking factor is a big one as it serves as a foot in the door and possible connections for the future. Not only will you benefit from all of these things, but also on average new hires with internship experience are offered higher starting salaries than those with no internship experience. Also, almost 40% of interns at major organizations become full-time employees upon graduation.

So get on it! Check and see if your job qualifies for academic credit. The application for internship credit is on the BSU career center at http://career.boisestate.edu/