A summer internship in itself isn’t too scary: you’re prepared to work hard, learn new things everyday, and be challenged to do your best. Probably the hardest part of the internship is finding it.

This is my third summer interning, and my interests, skills, and places of work have changed greatly. I’ll take you through my thought process throughout my internship searches to show how I explored, narrowed down, and applied to internships.

Two summers ago I was pushed to apply to internships I didn’t even know existed. I was waitressing when one of my customers asked me what I was going to major in at college (this was the summer before my first year at Scripps). When I replied “politics”, he exploded with questions: what are you doing at a restaurant? Why aren’t you out on a campaign? Have you contacted any of your state representatives? I never knew internship opportunities were available to students with no experience, and never thought I could contact places of work on my own without a reference. With my customer’s encouragement, I emailed my representatives at local, state, and federal levels in mid-June. In my email I wrote that I was interested in studying politics in college, wanted to have a career in the government, and included a few of my political extracurricular activities. I heard back within a day from one office and was called in for an interview: the next week I was in the State House twice a week as an unpaid intern. This internship search was unique because it made me realize that just by putting myself out there (with no resume, no real-world credentials) I could surprise myself and get positive responses (though I only had one interview, 2 other offices expressed interest in meeting me). I also learned from my customer that if I am truly interested in a certain field, I should be actively working in it, even if only part-time and even if not in the most glamorous setting.

After a year of Scripps under my belt, and experience working directly in the government, I wanted to intern at an organization that focused on women’s equality in politics. My main search tools were CP&R’s internship search engines (indeed.com, internhub.com) and Google. Though I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do, it took a lot of time to go through all the internships that came up when I searched politics + women + intern. Using synonyms (government + campaign) generated even more results, but after a few months of searching, several internships kept coming up that interested me. I started the search in the fall, and found it fun (but somewhat tedious) to search through all the possible internships. I was able to manage the internship search by designating an hour every weekend to search for internships. By March break I had applied to almost 10, having no idea how competitive the process was or how I stacked up against other applicants. Like the college application process, I applied to some that seemed very competitive (i.e. Governor’s office, PACs), average (i.e. my state’s democratic party, offices that I emailed last summer), and easy (i.e. campaigns that are always looking for as many people). I had positive responses from more places than I thought I would, and was able to intern at an organization that focused on getting women elected.

This internship made me realize that politics was not for me, and I changed my major to public policy analysis (PPA). I had a very unclear idea of what I wanted to do this past summer, but I learned from last year’s long, drawn out process that I had people who were more than willing to talk with me about internships. So this past year I took CP&R’s advice and asked current students who are PPA majors what they did over the summer, went through Life Connections and talked to PPA graduates about their work, and asked professors for internship ideas. This helped me immensely: PPA was new territory for me, and I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do with my summer. Instead of looking on website search engines, I utilized personal connections to learn about possible internships. After looking at internships closely online, I applied to about 5 internships, all in slightly different fields (consulting interested me from talks with alumnae, research institutions were encouraged by my professors) but all relating to PPA. Because I spent less time searching for internships, I was able to focus on the applications and interviews. This summer I will be interning for an organization that focuses on women in public policy.