2012-01-15, 08:08 PM
I'm unsure how to interpret what you mean when you say that for your career path, they require you to apply ahead of time. In our psychology internship class, it was certainly encouraged to have your internship ahead of time, but that was to weed out people who were too lazy to get one at all. Anybody who spent five minutes talking to the teacher and explaining their situation got the extension they needed. And I guess I don't see what the academic benefit would be (from the teacher's perspective) to require you to have your internship ahead of time. If you mean the actual internship sites, then I think that you need to have a serious look at the pro/con of expanding your search.
Obviously the most advantageous internship would be something like working for someone in Congress, etc, etc. But there are X number of politicians, and probably more interns than they need. Similarly, I was encouraged to apply to the psych wards of local hospitals in my search, however that's what absolutely everybody else was doing as well. Unless you feel like it's absolutely the academically necessary thing in the world to specifically work for, say, a Senator, I really would encourage you to broaden your horizons a little bit. All that aside even, and call me a pessimist for saying this, nobody in my class benefited from their internship, even the ones who worked in the psych ward and such. It's mostly going through the motions and because you're an undergrad, it leaves you unqualified to do anything hugely important. Most of the people I directly talked to thought the class was a joke. Obviously that's psychology, and you're in poly-sci, but I'd encourage you to take a long hard look on the impact of this whole internship situation and see if, perhaps, you should be committing your resources somewhere else.
Based off your high school experience, I'd really only encourage you more to put yourself out there in the college social life. I'd wager that you're probably meeting a very narrow group of people if you're only participating in things like "student government" and "organizations". And that can be great. They wouldn't exist if they weren't beneficial to people. I can't help but think that you might be missing out on a lot of real world experience though, in your pursuit of academic excellence. The quintessential road trip. The late night beach bonfire. Things like that. Ultimately though, these are all just suggestions. I sort of ninja'ed my way through school personally. It takes me 45 minutes to commute to Cal State Fullerton, so I wasn't really down to spend 90 minutes on the road for a 60 minute club meeting. This whole last semester I'm actually going to take online.
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Obviously the most advantageous internship would be something like working for someone in Congress, etc, etc. But there are X number of politicians, and probably more interns than they need. Similarly, I was encouraged to apply to the psych wards of local hospitals in my search, however that's what absolutely everybody else was doing as well. Unless you feel like it's absolutely the academically necessary thing in the world to specifically work for, say, a Senator, I really would encourage you to broaden your horizons a little bit. All that aside even, and call me a pessimist for saying this, nobody in my class benefited from their internship, even the ones who worked in the psych ward and such. It's mostly going through the motions and because you're an undergrad, it leaves you unqualified to do anything hugely important. Most of the people I directly talked to thought the class was a joke. Obviously that's psychology, and you're in poly-sci, but I'd encourage you to take a long hard look on the impact of this whole internship situation and see if, perhaps, you should be committing your resources somewhere else.
Based off your high school experience, I'd really only encourage you more to put yourself out there in the college social life. I'd wager that you're probably meeting a very narrow group of people if you're only participating in things like "student government" and "organizations". And that can be great. They wouldn't exist if they weren't beneficial to people. I can't help but think that you might be missing out on a lot of real world experience though, in your pursuit of academic excellence. The quintessential road trip. The late night beach bonfire. Things like that. Ultimately though, these are all just suggestions. I sort of ninja'ed my way through school personally. It takes me 45 minutes to commute to Cal State Fullerton, so I wasn't really down to spend 90 minutes on the road for a 60 minute club meeting. This whole last semester I'm actually going to take online.
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