The dog days are over. Approximately 150 days of class stretch ahead for the students of Keene State College. Students find themselves faced with the challenges of establishing a routine of responsibility and finding the strength to rekindle a two hour class attention span, just to name a few.
But for some KSC students, adjusting to the workload is less of a posed challenge because they did not spend their summers on the beach with a Corona in hand.
Internships. According to Forbes Magazine, 69% of companies in the United States with 100 or more employees offered full-time jobs to students who took internship positions.
KSC seniors Lorne Currier, April Ruback, and Read Vander Wyden spent their summers working outside of the KSC classroom in their fields of choice.
Currier is a fifth year senior who came back to KSC for a degree in geology after completing his Bachelors of Science in Environmental Studies last year. Just days after graduating from KSC in May, Currier shipped out to Wyoming and began work with the Wyoming Conservation Corps.
Currier said that while the pay and the long summer season attracted him to the position, the projects and the lifelong friends he met are what made it worth it.
Currier explained that he completed six different conservation projects in Wyoming, consisting of trail building, building and maintaining hiking and equestrian trails, and doing small projects for the City of Wyoming.
But off the beaten path is where Currier found his greatest challenge, as well as the highlight to his summer.
“It was the prairie dog project,” he said. Currier explained that for ten days straight he and his team sprayed pesticide down every prairie dog hole they found, for nine hours a day, in an attempt ultimately to kill fleas. Currier said the black footed ferret, the most endangered of the species, eats prairie dogs and lies inside prairie dog holes. The problem is, prairie dogs eat fleas, and fleas carry the plague. So Currier and his team found themselves responsible for each reaching nearly 600 holes a day with pesticide in the hopes that their efforts might save the prairie dogs and the endangered species. “It was a sweet summer for me,” he said, “I met a lot of people. I learned how to get along with them because we were in crews of eight. I learned really good group participation and cooperation skills.”
While Currier spent his summer out in the wild, seniors Ruback and Wyden spent their summers inside enhancing their fields of study: graphic design.
Far from the hot sands of Wyoming, Wyden spent his summer in Chelsea, Manhattan working for an ad agency. Wyden claimed he applied to nearly 100 companies with both paid and unpaid internship positions while studying abroad last semester. “I was surfing through thousands of internships online when I was abroad. I found this internship just surfing the internet on Monster.com and Craigslist and various amount of search engines,” the senior said. Wyden, whose dream it is to live in the city after graduation, said he stayed with his cousin in Queens as he worked as a “digital creative intern.” Wyden explained the company holds accounts with Banana Republic and Timberland, to name a few, and he found himself doing web assets, building animations for websites and assisting in digital mechanical work. Wyden, who is completing the graphic design major this year, said the internship broadened his view on the paths he could take when he graduates.
“I never really pictured myself in advertising because I have heard how intense it is. I was always skeptical—but that is why I wanted to intern at an ad agency to see how it worked. Working there for 12 weeks my ideas shifted towards what they [agencies] about and I think I’m definitely going back into advertising when I get out of school.”
Wyden encouraged students to get off the KSC campus and delve into as many aspects of their major that they can.
“If you at least do not explore the possibilities of getting an internship you never would know what it is like to work and be in the workforce outside of school with a college degree. I just wanted an idea of what I was getting into.” Similarly, senior Ruback is doubling up in graphic design and studio art. She too had an internship this summer in the graphic design field, working for an online media agency in New Hampshire. Though Ruback intensely followed her profile with Internships.com, it was a connection her mother made that landed Ruback the position.
For this senior, it was not so much the work content and the post-grad clarification that made the experience worthwhile, rather, it was the change from the competitive classroom environment to a professional team environment.
“We got to work with a large group of people on more of a professional level. Instead of feeling like you were in competition with everyone you felt like you were a part of a group. It gave me confidence in myself,” she said.
Like Wyden, Ruback encourages students to seek additional learning opportunities outside the classroom. “Its always good to start searching early so you have a choice of internship you want to have. Also, talk to your teachers. They have connections that can give you an edge.” Currier had something similar to say. “Search for it. You have to look. There are lots of jobs but you have to actively look for them. Do it. Apply. Go full gusto,” Currier added, “It’s sweet.”
Julie Conlon can be contacted at jconlon@keene-equinox.com