PAC Student Media

By Evelin Ortega
Pulse Staff Reporter   

Internship experiences can prove beneficial to students seeking careers in many areas. At Palo Alto College, students have many opportunities to seek and attain internships, depending upon the field of work they wish to pursue.

With summer drawing near, students may be looking into finding an internship to work at for the season. Knowing about what experiences come into play while interning and informing yourself of the resources available also helps students find out more about what it’s like to be an intern and decide if it’s something they can do.

For Roxana Valdovinos, an Education major at PAC, interning “…gives you hands-on experience of what you’re basically going to be doing for the rest of your life.”

An internship is a positive addition for your resume and will give you a taste of what kind of work you’ll be doing in the field you’re pursuing. It can help you decide whether the career is something that’s truly for you, according to Valdovinos.

“Some people in my class, they kind of gained that they didn’t want to be a teacher after [the internship] because they didn’t like it,” Valdovinos said.

For Jessica Kiolbassa, another Education major at PAC who has interned with the Junior Achievement program, the work had its difficulties, but was not without any fun.

“It was difficult to manage the added workload of lesson planning and preparing to teach, but it was all worth it in the end. I loved interacting with the students through all the fun lessons and seeing their bright faces when they would learn something new,” Kiolbassa said.

Experiences can vary in each field of work.

Diana Cardozo, a Logistics and Supply Chain Management major at PAC, has worked in hospitals as part of her internship and now works for the University Health System because of her work as an intern.

“I was in the inventory area, putting stock and everything away. The hospital management…they had a lot of items that they had to supply to each floor,” Cardoza said.

Working in a hospital entails some challenges.

“It was kinda confusing, I’d get lost…because the hospital is so big! I called in and they’d tell me don’t worry, I’ll find you, I’ll take you there. The environment is very nice, the people are nice,” Cardoza said.

Samantha Esparza, a PAC sophomore majoring in Communications who has interned with Giant Noise, a full-service PR firm in the Pearl, said, “Through my internship, I have learned how the world of PR works and what it means to be in that field of work.”

For more information about internship opportunities, contact Career Services at (210) 486-3131 or email them at pac-jobs@alamo.edu.