Abigail Cutlip

For the past eight weeks, I have been working as an intern at The Herald-Dispatch. Although this is never how I planned to spend my summer break, it ended up being the most exciting summer of my life.

I’ve always known I was going to do an internship – I mean, as a journalism student, I’m required to have one to graduate. However, as someone going into her junior year, I had no plans of completing my internship so soon.

On the last day of one of my spring courses, a few members of The Herald-Dispatch team came for a class visit. Earlier that day, I had just told one of my professors about how I had given no thought to an internship, and I didn’t understand all of my classmates who had lost their heads trying to find one. But, when The Herald-Dispatch’s editor expressed to my class a need for summer interns, I found myself sheepishly asking if I could talk with her.

Fast forward two weeks, and I received a phone call from the editor who wanted to let me know I had been chosen for the internship. I felt all kinds of emotions. Should I be proud? Should I be nervous? Everyone in my circle knew I had relatively no interest in a career as a reporter, so I wasn’t really sure what I had gotten myself into.

After weeks of worrying and dreading taking on a full-time, Monday-Friday position, it took approximately one day, eight hours on the job, for me to change my outlook. 

Although I’ve done nothing besides work this summer, it hasn’t felt like I’ve let my break go to waste. You see, I was lucky enough to land an internship with a caring team who tries their best to play into my interests while also giving me a fair mix of different experiences; in turn, going to work every day has felt more like a reward than a punishment.

The exciting thing about being a journalist is that there is no way to know what each day will bring. Of course, this can be intimidating, too – like when they ask you to get the latest information on the largest technology outage in history – but I ultimately entered the newsroom every morning looking forward to what adventure I might take on that day.

During my time at The Herald-Dispatch, I had nearly 40 stories published. This number doesn’t even count the numerous briefs and police reports I wrote but do not have my name on them. At the end of the day, I feel better knowing that’s almost 40 more stories I can add to a portfolio that will one day land me a job – and I still have two whole years of college left to add to that same portfolio.

According to a study by the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, college graduates who completed internships were more likely to secure employment within six months of graduation, and interns were more likely to have higher starting pay than students who did not complete internships. Now that I’ve completed my internship, I understand why.

I learned more this summer about my work field than I have in my first two years of college, and I know it’s because I was getting first-hand experience in the field. Not only do I feel more confident in the work I’m producing but also in myself, in general. 

I couldn’t be happier to have completed my internship this summer, and I’m already looking into possible internships to do next summer. After all, you won’t truly know what you like to do until you put yourself out there and do it.

So, if you won’t take it from your professor, take it from a kid who’s just like you: do the internship.