Q: What do you do in an internship?
|
Don't picture yourself polishing King Tut's death mask or
reassembling the Euphronius Vase as part of your internship. Interns are
at the bottom of the career ladder, so they usually end up doing
administrative work such as labeling envelopes, giving tours of historic
sites or museums, or arranging the schedules of volunteers. Usually,
though, a supervisor will bring you along to help with more interesting
tasks, especially if you have been an intern for awhile and you have
impressed your supervisor with your work ethic and dedication to the
job.
Internship opportunities are what you make of them, however.
Get to know the people at your internship site to begin building your
professional network. This is the best way to find out about current job
offerings and the requirements of a career. In addition, every
professional at every level has to spend a great deal of time doing
administrative chores; if you gain experience doing administrative work
now, you will have a marketable skill!
To get credit for an
archaeology or art history internship, you need to register for ARTH
495. You will have to decide how many credit hours you want. The usual
formula is that for every 1 credit hour, you must work at the internship
for 3-4 hours per week for at least 10 weeks. Thus if you would like 3
credit hours you will need to work 10-12 hours per week. When you find
an internship you would like to do, contact the museum or historic site
and see if they are willing to allow you to do it. If they are, get the
name of a supervisor, which you will pass along to Dr. Strobel, who is
in charge of internships. She will call your supervisor and find out
what is expected of you. At the end of the semester, she will call the
supervisor again to see how well you preformed and, therefore, what type
of grade you have earned.
