I was lucky enough to be in a number of Postmedia newspapers today for an interview about my recent summer internship semester (here is the Vancouver Sun article, plug plug plug). I’ve had a couple of friends that have asked me about it when they considered doing an Arts Internship, and because the deadline for most of the upcoming applications looks like it will be on September 30th I thought it might be something a couple people could be interested in reading about. I don’t have any pictures, but if you’re an Arts student looking for work experience please don’t fall asleep; this could be worth your time.
If you already know what it is and just want an opinion, not a summary, skip down a couple paragraphs.
The UBC Arts Internship Program is a program for Arts students (go figure) that allows them to apply for one semester or two-semester placements at a variety of organizations and businesses around Vancouver (for a full list, visit the Arts Internship website and scroll down to see “Organizations that have hosted Arts Interns” or login to UBC CareersOnline and search “Internships” and almost all of them will be through the Arts Internship Program). There are a lot of positions with non-profit organizations so it’s also an excellent chance to do some great work for your cause of choice. For example, my internship was at the BCSPCA, where I began volunteering when I was young. If you’d rather, there are internships available with a number of private businesses as well.
The catch is that in most cases (or all, but I’ve heard of a couple exceptions), you’re not getting paid. Most positions are only 8 – 12 hours a week, so the time commitment isn’t much more than what you would probably give in a couple of school clubs or a volunteer position elsewhere – it could definitely be done while you’re in a school semester, though I guess it depends on your workload. I would not recommend an Arts student to do it with more than 12 credits during school if they’re not very self-motivated.
My opinion:
If you can afford to do it, do it. My internship gave me a chance to get some work experience that is probably a lot more relevant to what I’ll be doing after university than what I’ve done before. Before I did an internship, all I had in terms of work experience was a couple of part-time entry-level jobs during high school – I had been a stock boy, and before that, I worked at McDonalds. If you’re not doing co-op, I think it would be a huge disservice to yourself to not at least do one internship; a bachelor’s degree won’t tell an employer if you can handle yourself in a work environment. If you are doing co-op, I’d still recommend trying to squeeze in one term before you apply to give you an edge.
If you’re worried about affording to do it – that is, if you’re worried that the cost of the time commitment is paid work you could be doing or focusing on improving your grades – but you still want to, really think it through carefully. Paid work is still experience, and while I genuinely think the Arts Internship program is awesome, not much is worth going into debt. I got lucky and was able to find a job after I started my internship (in part thanks to my internship people providing a reference) but was turned down several other jobs because I told them I had another commitment. However, last time I checked, jobs still aren’t easy to come by right now, so if you’re not going to be getting paid work anyway, you might as well do some kind of work.
Something else you’ll get from the Arts Internship Program that you may have had no idea about is some awesome job hunting and work advice from UBC Career Services in the form of an orientation before the work term and knowledgeable individuals from UBC CS willing to help you during an after your application to the internship. Isn’t Career Services available to me regardless? Yes. Don’t they have workshops available on topic mentioned above? Yes. Would I have used any of this if it wasn’t the AIP? Probably not, and I wouldn’t have gotten to meet the awesome new Arts Internship Coordinator, Ms. Pinch, who was a UBC student herself AND did the co-op program.
To me, possibly the biggest thing about university is exposing yourself to as many opportunities as possible. That’s what the Arts Internship program did for me. It gave me the chance to experience something entirely new, see first-hand what it’s like to work at a non-profit, make new contacts who have already acted as references, help a cause I care about, and even experience what it feels like to have way too many people stare at me as I got my picture taken on campus for a neat little article I’ll probably end out shamelessly framing (if you saw a guy sitting in very uncomfortable poses around the village and IKBLC a couple weeks ago smiling even though he had something in his teeth while he got his picture taken, that was me).
Sorry for the huge block of text, I tried to bold it up to give you a shot of adrenaline every now and then. Sarcasm.
2 responses to “AIP, in my experience”