Oh! What About Internships?

INTERNSHIPS

Imagine having to plunge into work blind, with no guidance as to what should or shouldn’t be done. Imagine making mistakes people made a hundred years ago all over again today, all because there isn’t any way for knowledge to percolate, filter down, as it is learnt over time. Imagine going to the barber’s, or the hairdresser’s, and you have to subject your hair to the attentions of someone who hasn’t ever handled a clipper, or a hair straightener. 99.9 times out of 100, you wouldn’t subject yourself to a greenhorn’s mercy. This is where internships make a gallant entrance.

Internships bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practice by providing an avenue to witness first-hand, business practices and techniques, technical skills, and activities needed in correct administration.  An internship is defined as any official or formal program to provide practical experience for beginners in an occupation or profession. It is also described as any period of time during which a beginner acquires experience in occupation, profession or pursuit. Therefore, doctors, lawyers, engineers, hairdressers, barbers, tailors, mechanics, technical personnel etc all usually have to go through this bedding-in plus skill-acquisition phase before they are let loose on the world. You may have heard that a multinational company or a “big” company was recruiting graduate interns or management trainees of recent. That’s how the serious boys roll.

Some of your more famous names actually started out their careers by learning the ropes as interns. You may not have heard of the not-so-famous Oprah Winfrey. Then again, you may have just crawled out from a prehistoric cave. In her sophomore year at Tennessee State University, Oprah Winfrey, the richest black woman alive and talk-show host started out as an intern at a Nashville CBS affiliate – WTFV-TV before she got hired as a news anchor in 1973. You may also have not heard of the equally not-so-famous Steven Spielberg. He only went and directed some of the best movies since this side of the Milky Way Galaxy. Aged just 17, Steven Spielberg got an internship with Universal Studio’s purchasing department. This paved the way for him to develop into the director he is today. I may have mentioned Dick Cheney, George W. Bush Jnr’s Vice President, who started out by interning for a Rep. in 1969, but his reputation as VP is hardly stellar these days.

Bill Gates, former richest man in the world (still may be again) spent a summer as a congressional page as a bright-eyed 17 year old. The budding entrepreneur sold outdated campaign buttons as collectors’ items. This was before Harvard, and definitely before the software behemoth called Microsoft. Closer to home, the head of the Ibru Organization, Olorode Michael Ibru began professional life as a management trainee on the books of United African Company (UAC). Nigeria’s foremost businessman, Aliko Dangote, started off in his uncle’s company, where he garnered enough experience to go on to become Africa’s richest man today.

All these people are famous, true. However, not everyone has to be famous to be a success. There are hundreds of thousands of people who were first interns out there who have made it in their own right but because needs are needs, they don’t get exalted on the society pages or dailies’ headlines. The aim is to get you to understand that “you may climb on the shoulder of giants” and make that your own starting point, which is exactly what internship is. It is important to note that not every internship post comes with a pay option. Remember that it is the experience that matters.