Photo Courtesy of Michele Cinque, Director of Positano News – Jandoli students interview the owner of a hotel and restaurant in Piano, Italy.
BY KELSEY PURCELL, FEATURES EDITOR
Whether they spent summer on the coast of Italy or in a small town in Western New York, it was a busy season for some students.
As students become upperclassmen, they have to start using the summer as a time to prepare for their future. Many programs require a certain amount of internship hours or documented hours of experience as part of graduation requirements.
For all students in the Jandoli School of Communication, they need to complete 400 hours of internships as part of their graduation requirements. Some students in the Dennis R. DePerro School of Health Professions need to build their hours of experience in a hospital or other patient care facilities if they wish to go on to further medical schooling.
Elizabeth Egan, senior journalism major, spent five weeks of her summer in Italy as an intern at Positano News. She wrote articles geared towards English speaking tourists. Egan also took suggestions from her boss and conducted interviews and wrote about places that he recommended, she said.
“Every day consisted of going into their newsroom, sometimes staying to write and work with other journalists and sometimes going out into the community with our boss to conduct interviews,” she said.
Egan said she learned and practiced important skills such as listening, editing and building confidence by conducting unplanned interviews during her internship.
Internships help students build their transferable skills.
“The listening skills, boldness in interviewing and time management skills I learned can be applied to any future career I go into,” said Egan.
Internships can be fun. Students can feel a sense of joy and accomplishment, especially when doing something they enjoy.
Egan said her favorite part of her experience was the number of interviews she conducted and the number of articles she published.
“I truly got a feel for working in a real newsroom as a real journalist and it affirmed my decision to pursue a career in journalism,” she said.
Sydney Flaitz, a junior health science major, took a certified nursing assistant (CNA) class this summer. She attended the class for five weeks and had a week of clinicals, she said.
In class, she learned how to care for patients. Her professor taught lessons and reviewed practice problems.
“I also practiced bathing and cleaning dummies to prepare for clinicals,” Flaitz said.
At the end of the course, she took the CNA exam which had both a written and a skills portion. After passing the exam, Flaitz said she got a CNA position at a nursing home.
She learned skills such as communication, problem solving and task delegation among other CNAs, she said. “Talking to and understanding my residents on a better level since I worked with them daily made caring for them smoother,” she said.
Students in many fields need to gain experience before entering the workforce. Learning from experience allows people to gain both job-specific and transferable skills which are important to professional growth and development.
purcelkr20@bonaventure.edu
