I know what you might be thinking right now. You have seen the Career Semester program, you think it is a good opportunity, great resume fodder, but oh wait! It is all remote! You see that and you are immediately reminded of our collective first semester at Zoom University! That seems like a huge disadvantage compared to the kind of internship experiences you might have had previously. But do not walk away from this yet and let me tell you why:
Before I delve into why you should give Career Semester a chance, let me tell you my story. I am a fourth-year undergrad at Michigan State University, I am from Seattle, Washington originally, and my major is Jazz Studies in the College of Music. Back in March, I was going through my Facebook feed and I came upon an ad promoting the program. I clicked on it and I found they offered a course/internship in Digital Marketing. I looked into it and I decided to apply for the course since I felt that this could be very useful to me and I knew I was not getting any work in music any time soon.
I filled out the application and submitted it thinking, “Well I totally last-minute-d this application and I do not know if my midnight essays are enough to get me into this. It seems competitive.” Then, I got the acceptance email. I was pretty shocked that I got in. Now that I had this opportunity in front of me, I had to figure out some of the logistics behind it. Once those were sorted, I went and accepted their admission offer, bright-eyed, and not knowing what I was about to get myself into.
In May, I decided to return to Seattle from Michigan and prepared myself the best I could. Once the course started, I was trying my best to keep up with all the information and work I was getting. It was a bit overwhelming at first since it turns out, I barely had any experience with this kind of coursework. I managed to get with the flow in Week 2 and was very excited to start my internship. As the internship started, I had more roadblocks thrown at me. There was some miscommunication about what my team was supposed to work on and we ended up working on a pretty tight schedule. In addition, since the company I interned for was based in Cape Town, South Africa, I ended up having a lot of early morning meetings (like 6 and 7 am my time).
Despite encountering some setbacks, I had a life-changing experience. I learned the basic tools of digital marketing, remote work, and a lot of information about chickpeas. I attended a lot of workshops offered in the community platforms and managed to learn even more information relevant to developing my career. I met so many people from different parts of the country and the world at large. It transformed how I thought about what I could do in both my career as a musician and even develop another one to give myself twice as much work to do!
All in all, there are three tips I will give you to alleviate your concerns. First, many people struggle with learning online but the teaching teams are brilliant and they do everything that they can to make sure you have everything you need. In addition, as in my case, there might be struggles with communication but as long as you are triple-checking everything and asking for help when you need it, you will be good. Furthermore, all the work you are doing and the time you are spending in class and meetings can be exhausting, so remember to take care of yourself. Do not sacrifice your own health! Following all these tips will help you succeed and I hope you feel a little more confident about deciding to take on this amazing opportunity.
