How I Found The True Meaning Of Internship.
Why should I ever think of working for someone for a couple of months without any payment? Previously, I thought it's something insane to do, till that anticipated period of internship, when I found myself in a situation that made me have a rethink.
In the article titled "Begin, by working for experience, not for money", I highlighted the importance of an internship and why you should engage in it. I also gave some reasons why you shouldn't bother yourself with how much you're being paid since your major concern is to learn and get experience through working.
Today, I'm going a step further, by telling you that if there's no paid internship available, you should go for the unpaid internship. Yes, you should opt for free work. If the situation on the ground demands that you have to work for free in other to get the skills and experience needed for success in that field, you should do it.
Some students who understand the importance of internships even made payments in other to secure their desired internships both locally and internationally.
An internship is a big source for getting on the field experience since experience is the new entry-level requirement for newly graduated job applicants.
During my fourth year in the university as a computer engineering student, my course mates and I were very happy because we are sincerely looking forward to a six months internship once we finish our first semester. You need to see how passionate we are about this forthcoming internship.
The major reason for such an anticipated period isn't for an opportunity we will have to learn how to solve real-time technical issues in our field of study, but on how much we'll make for those six months if only we can engage with a good company in one of the major commercial cities in Nigeria.
In no distant time, the internship period which we usually call industrial training(IT) is here with us and most of us traveled for the much-anticipated internship.
I applied to few companies in Lagos and Anambra State, but it's only an information technology (IT) company in Anambra state that accepted my application.
Meanwhile, the only problem I had with this company is their method of not paying interns. Their policy is that they will allow you to work with them and learn all you could, but they will not place you on any payment.
This is not my plan. The plan is that I'll get the experience, get paid for this period of the internship so that I'll buy a laptop (even if it's fairly used), make some new changes to my wardrobe, and then have some extra money that I'll use to catch some fun when I get back to school.
So I have to decide whether to take the offer or keep searching for a better offer while the six months keep ticking away. Then, I have to think deeply and asked myself a major question. What is the real essence of this internship period?
Is it the money you'll make or the experience you'll get? Is it not better to get the right experience and go back to school being better informed than to have lots of money to satisfy some of my frivolous desires without the needed experience?
So I immediately called back to the company to accept the offer and decided to give in my best to whatever work assigned to me and learn all that I could during the internship period.
Lo and behold, by the time I'm through with my internship, I can confidently tell you that I'm a computer engineer.
With the experiences and what I learned during the internship, I can single-handedly fix my computer and also help others fix theirs for a fee.
Though I went back to school without the laptop and new sets of clothes I intended to buy after my internship, but I went back as a more experienced student, which helped me have an easy transition into the labour market immediately after I graduated.
On this note, I will always go with the saying that says" Don't just give me fish, teach me how to fish". In other words, the real essence of an internship is to give you a real-time platform where you'll practice what you've already known theoretically, in other to acquire needed skills that will help you operate in a chosen career.
On this platform, we offer stock management internship to entrepreneurial-minded students who will like to gain some real-time entrepreneurial experience while also benefiting financially from it as a student. If such an offer interests you, then you can apply HERE.
