Saturday, November 20, 2010

Virtual Internships: An Exciting New Model for Gaining Professional Experience


On Wednesday afternoon, I received an e-mail my Mom with a link and a brief message that said, "you two are probably too busy for this, but you might want to check it out!" Unfortunately, I brushed aside this email, marked it as unread and attended to what I thought were more pressing matters.


A few hours later, I revisited my mothers e-mail and this time I was intrigued by the subject of e-mail-- something apparently i had missed the first time, "Virtual Internship for the DOS."
 A virtual internship? I had never really heard of this before. Intrigued,  I clicked the link and saw this:




After reading this brief description, I was incredibly excited about this potential opportunity. There was, however, a catch--the application was due by 9PM and I had my schedule booked for the rest of the day! Needless to say, I found a way to rush and get my application for the position in before the deadline.


While applying, I was able to read more about what the virtual-internship actually consisted of. For this position, it involved keeping and moderating a blog for the State Department in either Uganda, South Africa, or Rwanda. I cannot think of an internship that I would rather do.


Whether or not my rushed application (which consisted of me writing a resume and an essay in two hours) gets me this position, I am grateful for the experience because it opened up my vision to a whole new world of potential internship opportunities i.e. virtual or e-internships. 


Virtual internships are a very new thing and there are a lot of opportunities out there. If you are interested in learning more about what an e-internship is and some of the benefits from doing one, then you might want to check out these links:


About.com- Virtual Internships

Virtual Internship Guide

WSJ Article on Virtual Internships

For those in my Digitial Civilization class, this really might be something that you might want to look more into.

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