Jorge Guzman’s internship with the Kansas City Royals last summer was a lesson in life skills.
“Your responsibility is the biggest thing,” said Guzman, a senior at North Central College studying sports management. “The communication as well, communicating to your superiors, to the other players, to the other interns, it’s just one big bubble that if you don’t communicate correctly things will get lost and the work won’t get done.”
For college students like Jorge, those skills are the building blocks to the next step.
“It’s a perfect segue into transitioning from college to career. This is still a learning opportunity. An internship is intended to be benefiting a student in terms of helping them learn and again an opportunity for them to apply what they’re learning in the classroom. And of course the benefit that students seek as well is that networking developing those good networks so that they can pave the road to what will happen next after they graduate,” said Haydee Nunez, the director of Career Development at NCC.
For high schoolers, internships provide the perfect opportunity to explore their passions and become a competitive college applicant.
“But the greatest thing that we’ve heard from all of our students who’ve participated in internships is that they feel much more confident in their own skill set,” said Julie Carlsen, the director of community relations for District 203. “They’ve been working alongside professionals, who’ve been coaching them, who’ve been mentoring them, and who’ve gradually allowed them to take on more responsibilities. And by being able to see one of those projects come through to completion and to the end is incredibly fulfilling for them.”
And there are plenty of local opportunities, from our own NCTV17 to the City of Naperville itself.
“The undergraduate internship programs are very career focused. So you have students coming in that they’re getting real practical life experience on their career, so it’s very dedicated to transportation, engineering and development, or to the electric utility. With the high school internships, while they might be embedded into a particular department such as communications, financial, public works, they’re getting an overview of the entire city,” said HR for the city Helga Oles.
Whether it’s local or abroad, internships can help move a student to success.
Naperville News 17’s Christine Lena reports.
