I visited a former professor the other day with no intentions of talking about my internship. After asking if I would graduate in May, she immediately asked how I liked my internship. I explained how I like the job, but more importantly that I have learned a lot. She simply nodded her head like she knew exactly what I meant.
I expect that most people consider their first internship to be difficult in some way. In their article about moving beyond the academic world, Anson and Forseburg talked about the three stages most first-time interns go through. The first is idea shock, the second is frustration, and the third is resolution. I want to focus on the first stage. I have actually been thinking about this idea of idea shock since I started my internship. Of course I anticipated what my work day would be like, and I wasn't exactly right.
The major difference is the classroom vs. internship setting. Academic vs. professionalism. Student vs. employee. Teacher vs. boss. Grade vs. money (ideally anyway). So many contrasts come to mind. Not that I expected the exact same atmoshpere when I transitioned from school to work, but somehow I failed to make expectations about the differences.
In class, I listen to my professor explain a project and provide some additional information. Then, I work on a project and turn it in to my professor for a grade, which may or may not come with an explanation. Also, I might peer review with my classmates, which is an activity in which I rarely actually say what I'm really thinking.
At work, I may receive a document with a post-it-note message from my boss' secretary (my boss, by the way, is not in the office at the time) asking me to start a new project. I have no guidance and I work alone. When I finish, I may sit down with my boss while he reviews the document, but I will more likely get an e mail or an edited copy in which I adjust the changes. Anyone who looks at the document voices their opinion because more is at stake than just a grade.
Learning to write with a 'there's-more-at-stake-than-a-grade' mentality is very difficult. People I work with have been writing at the work place several years and have lots of experience in this area. I will miss the detailed explanations and soft peer reviews, but I have learned not to expect them in the future.
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I agree. This is my first "professional" internship it has it been challenging. But, I know that everything that I learn is going to be beneficial in the future.
ReplyDeleteThis entry is good material that you could use in your reflection. :-)
I see what your talking about how we move from learning to applying.
ReplyDeleteThat change from an academic to a professional setting does result in some shock. Fortunately for me, and incorrectly, I assumed that the internship would draw incredibly little from my actual work in class. I went in with the mentality that I would need to learn as I went, basically from scratch. And while this was partially true and probably helped me offset the shock, I ended up using skills, ideas, and just a way of thinking that was taught to me in classes. The most beneficial classes to me proved to be Editing with Dr. Guage and Professional Writing with Dr. Juckett. Editing taught me the skills and techniques and Professional Writing taught me the mentality necessary to enter this line of work.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post, Jenn -- I'm glad that you found the Anson and Forsberg article to be helpful in thinking through your own internship and the coming academic-to-workplace transition. I'm particularly interested in a statement you make near the end of your post: "Learning to write with a 'there's-more-at-stake-than-a-grade' mentality is very difficult." What are the specific difficulties you're facing in this "new" type of writing? Conceptualizing the audience and brainstorming material? Fine-tuning types of stuff? Something else?
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