Go to school, make good grades, study until your eyes give out, maintain your GPA, be active on campus and, most importantly, don’t forget to get an internship.
Being a college student is much more overwhelming then many people may think. Aside from the typically normalized image of all of the excess partying and drinking college students are engulfed in, the vast majority of us take our education very seriously. Regardless of the major, the ultimate goal of college students, believe it or not, isn’t graduation ― it’s working in their desired field. And the only way to gain hands-on experience to determine if a career choice is right for students is to obtain an internship. Sounds like a pretty simple task right? No, apparently not at NSU.
NSU is an exceptional school when it comes to many things: academics, athletics, notable alumni, etc. While NSU excels in many areas, it significantly lacks in the decision-making process pertaining to internships. Internships are a monumental part of a college student’s life; they offer students the ability to “test drive” a career, network with future employers, get a real-world perspective on an occupation and, most importantly, get a chance to get their foot in the door. NSU recognizes the importance of this; administrators and faculty urge students to search for internships by recommending frequent visits to the Office of Career Development, send out mass emails to different majors about companies looking for interns and even offer yearly internship fairs that typically occur around September or October in the fall semester and January or February in the winter.
While NSU continues to enforce the significance of internships, they don’t quite recognize the unrealistic criteria they require for an internship to be approved and counted for course credit. In addition to the prerequisites, number of credits and GPA requirements, the main issue with NSU’s internships is the deadlines.
I completely understand that things must be done in a timely manner to ensure a smooth-sailing semester, but what I can’t understand is why NSU completely ignores the fact that students have absolutely no control over when they get offered an internship. The Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences’ deadline to get credit for fall internships are Aug. 1. The winter internship deadline is Dec. 1 and the summer internship deadline is April 1. Deadlines to get credit for internships are nearly two months prior to when companies normally accept students. This makes it nearly impossible to meet expected deadlines.
Applying for an internship isn’t the typical walk in the park. Students wait years to gain enough credits just to be qualified, then spend sleepless nights studying and writing papers to maintain a GPA above a 2.5. Then, they make sure they’re highly involved on campus to obtain several letters of recommendation from faculty and staff. They spend days perfecting their resumes, ensuring they stand out from the rest of the Florida college students competing for the same internship, and then they wait. Students wait weeks on top of weeks checking their email, waiting for the message that says they’ve been selected out thousands of students to intern at their dream company. While this process may produce a few hurdles they have to overcome, the main obstacle many NSU students can’t quite get over is the approval for course credit.
All those years, all those nights and all those tears go completely down the drain as students sit and wallow in dejection debating whether or not they should accept the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and have it interfere with their normal school schedule or deny it and continue hoping at least one reputable company selects them for an internship before the given deadline.
NSU has the uncanny ability to make students feel exceptionally small and undermined when it comes to approving internships. Students should not have to be pressured with the question of which avenue would be better for them to further their dreams. We should have the option of being able to accept an internship at a reputable company without the fear that this opportunity could possibly hinder the chances of graduating. NSU students have worked hard, excelling in academics and athletics, outshining larger universities, beating out the competition and landing these remarkable internships. If these companies can see our hard work and dedication and provide us with the opportunity to excel in the real world, why can’t NSU?
If NSU wants to offer a diverse array of innovative academic programs that complement educational opportunities, then why do they make it so incredibly difficult to succeed?
NSU should rethink and revise internship deadlines and requirements. This would give students a better chance to represent the school in a professional manner. Graduating with a diploma is a wonderful achievement, but graduating with a diploma and a job offer is the ultimate mark of success for students as well as the school.
