Student Blog
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My Summer
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Hello! My name is Lisa Williamson and I'm a fourth year marketing student in the Edwards School of Business. I am originally from Calgary and I transferred to ESB last year from the University of Alberta.
My story begins in January 2009, when I suddenly realized that I had no idea what I was going to do for a summer job. Option 1: Go back home and work in an office again. Option 2: Go to a new city and get some experience there. Not knowing what type of job I wanted, I decided to explore internship options in New York City. I loved the idea of spending the entire summer exploring New York in my spare time.
I started searching for internships online, with my only criteria being that the internship be offered in New York City. I strongly recommend you either know what kind of internship you want to pursue, or where you would like to go before you start searching. I thought I may run into trouble getting a student visa, but you don't need one for a short term study period. I also thought that a US company may prefer to hire an American intern over a Canadian one, but decided to take my chances. If I got the internship I could take it, and if not, Option 1 would have to do.
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ED2010 was
the best website I found, because it was updated daily directly by the company
offering the internship. I decided to apply for an internship at a magazine
because many of the postings were targeted to students with a business
background, and I figured that it would be more relevant to my education. |
From there, I started submitting my resume to the magazines that I was interested in working for. Country Living Magazine was my top choice because they had an opening in market and style. A lot of the positions were for fashion or web design, which would be fun, but I though a market and style internship would look better with my business degree. About 2 weeks later, I received a phone call and was given an initial interview. The regular questions were asked such as when you can work, what magazines you read, what experience you have, etc. I was told that magazines have to be very selective because they can only take on 2-3 interns, which isn't very many for an international magazine. If you got a phone call, you were already in the magazine's top 20 intern choices. The interview was no longer than 10 minutes, in which I found out a lot of information about the internship tasks and the process of working there. I later found out that I was one of the magazine's top 2 intern choices. My biggest problem now became finding a place to stay in NYC for the summer!
Once I got the internship I had to figure out where to live since I didn't know anyone who lived in New York City. I decided to ditch the traditional craigslist, because I had heard about possible scams, especially for apartments in New York City.
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I decided to go the route of finding an organization or building that housed people on a short term basis, and I stumbled upon NYCIntern, which is an organization that accommodates interns in university residences that are vacated for the summer. They set you up with 3 other interns of the same sex. |
It was fortunate that I roomed with three other interns who I got along with very well and who were in school and completing internships in different fields than me. One of my roommates was a theatre major interning for a theatre company, one was placed at the United Nations, and the third was working for a major league baseball team, the New York Yankees. I would strongly recommend finding a place to live before you go to your internship city. It was a huge relief off my back to know that I didn't have to rush around and pay for a hotel while I found a place to live.
Stay tuned for my next entry, highlighting my first day in the office.
