Every college intern should make an A for the course, right? A is not for Automatic.
While you might think there's no content in the course, just process, this is the place where your content courses culminate. In short, your internship is where you apply the content you've learned in previous classes.
There's more to an internship, of course, and that's where your site supervisor plays a crucial role: evaluating your performance on the job. Some colleges count that evaluation in the semester grade while other schools downplay its importance for the academic record. (The reason is a pretty simply one: there may be little consistency in evaluation across all the internships so it's not a level playing field for everyone in the class.)
Best protection for the internship grade: understand the criteria for grading. Best sources of information: the professor and the syllabus.
On unlucky days at your internship site, you will be bored. That's when you need to have your own time-killer in your backpack. Recommendation: be prepared to take care of yourself and to take action.
First, let your mentor know that you have no task at hand.
Second, ask if you should wait for an assignment.
Third, assuming you are asked to wait patiently, create your own activity so you really can be patient.
Your own activity... read a book that you brought with you, pull out your own journal or notebook and write an entry about the day, work on an assignment for school. You know what not to do: play games on a computer (even your cell phone) and talk on your phone (even texting).
How you spend the down time will reflect on your time management skills. Make a good impression. You never know when a mentor is envisioning you as an employee.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving (or any holiday) is a great time to ask your internship mentor or college professor about protocol for taking some time off. The operative words: two weeks before.
On your campus, professors and students may have some unwritten rules about Thanksgiving week. The most common one is "it's OK to leave campus before the holiday." The next most common rule is "you cannot leave campus before the holiday."
Your internship may not have any such expectation. In fact, your internship may be working on Thanksgiving! Or back on the job on Friday or Saturday.
As a college intern, you may be excused from the internship site for the span of days that match your campus holiday. But the responsible thing to do is to confirm that... two weeks before.
To locate international internships, look to directories of internships and expect to have to read broadly!
But here's a short cut to get started: IIEPASSPORT.ORG's list of countries with descriptions of what an internship might entail. Click on a country name and take time to scroll down to the section called Online Resources on each page. There, you will find links to "official" pages to keep researching.
Connecting with an international internship takes months! Start early!
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