Chicago Semester

CS Summer Prep

Posted by Leslie Lehner in Internships in Orientation in Staff Stories | Jun 06, 2011

With no students around, the summer months are quiet at Chicago Semester, and the staff takes the time to prepare for the next batch of eager students. In the meantime, students are often wondering what to expect, and how the internship process works. To answer questions and alleviate fears, our Internship Coordinator, Leslie Lehner, has written a message to our upcoming “general” students (anyone other than a student teacher, social work or nursing student):

“So, nothing happens until we get there, right?”

Wrong!  To the contrary, Janelle Kibbe and I have been in contact with each of you to talk about what kind of internship each of you would like, to communicate about professional portfolios, and to finalize resumes.  We try to line up 2 – 3 interviews based on your interests and that means contacting many sites to find the sites that are the right fit and determine if they have room for an intern—a fairly time consuming process!

While we may need to be in touch with you as we set the appointments up, most of the work on your end happens during ORIENTATION WEEK in August.  It’s a very busy, and at times, overwhelming week for students.  You arrive on a Monday afternoon, meet your fellow classmates and learn more about the week.  We’ll head out to dinner in small groups before returning for more sessions, including one in which you’ll learn the details about your interview appointments.  Tuesday morning we talk about interviewing tips and techniques, and Tuesday afternoon students meet individually with us to talk about each of their interview sites.  You will also meet with another staff member to do a mock interview.  Wednesday and Thursday, you’ll head out to interviews, and on Friday we hope decisions can be made regarding where each student will intern—based on feedback from you and from the sites.  It’s quite the process, but it always works out!  As you can tell, the internship piece is a lot in and of itself, and did I mention the sessions on housing and safety and transportation and… Nope; that’s for another (upcoming) post.

It’s a busy, fun, exciting, scary, and VERY productive week.  You’ll be exhausted by the end of the week, but you should have a good idea of where you will intern, with whom you will room, the location of your apartment and how to get from one place to another on public transportation in this terrific city.  You will be off on a unique semester in which you will experience living, learning, and working in Chicago!