It's only been three weeks since Eric Baker started an internship through the Community Involvement Center on campus. He is a teacher's aide in a classroom with an Afrocentric curriculum, and already he's learning things they don't teach in a college classroom.
One of the highlights of Baker's internship experience happened one day when a young Asian boy came to him with a problem he was having at home.
"Brother Eric, my parents are getting upset with me because I keep saying I'm proud to be black," he said.
Baker responded with a chuckle because the boy was only repeating what the other students in his classroom were saying.
Because of these types of experiences, Baker said he is certain he made the right choice in choosing to become a teacher.
According to Baker, the internship allows him the chance to see which grade he wants to teach. He's learning how to handle problems and issues that affect children.
"Getting paid is less important to me, the work experience is more valuable," Baker said.
Like Baker, more college students are discovering that job experience is what most employers are looking for when hiring a potential employee.
Many SF State students agree that a person should do at least one internship in their college career, but low wages are a big deterrent.
Students who have done internships claim they have helped them decide what field of work they want to pursue after graduation, and others have reconsidered their choice of major.
Part of the goal of CIC is to give SF State students real-life work experience and help them make a connection with neighboring communities.
In the 18 years CIC has been in existence, the center has been very successful in its goal. The center serves 400 to 500 students every semester and many students re-enlist, according to program coordinator Dana Mitchell.
"Real-life on-the-job experience is a whole lot better than book knowledge," said Dionne Cummings, who got her internship through CIC.
Her internship experience, however, wasn't so nice. As an accounting major, she chose an internship with R.H. Green property management firm. "My goal in life was to be rich, so I became an accounting major," Cummings said. This experience changed her mind.
She was hired as an accounting clerk, and she thought she would be good at it because she had done so well in her accounting classes.
The main focus of her job was to take payments from clients, log them in the company's computer and drop them off at the bank. Cummings had spent most of the morning speeding through her work because everything seemed so easy.
When she got ready to take the payments to the bank for deposit, she was supposed to stop by her supervisor's office to double check her work.
He discovered Cummings had posted the payments to the wrong accounts. Cummings was sure she would be fired. She was right.
Changing her major to liberal studies, Cummings called her internship a "learning experience."
SF State student Yasmin Figueroa chose a paid internship as a production assistant for a Sunday afternoon program at KPIX television station.
Her job was to write copy for the host of the show, to go out and schedule interesting guests for the show and make sure all the necessary arrangements were made in advance to make the show run smoothly.
By the end of the day on Saturday, everything was ready to go except one thing -- the guests. Figueroa gave the scheduled guests the wrong date to appear on the show.
Because of her mistake, there was no one scheduled to appear on the show. She didn't bother to go back after that. Figueroa is now a political science major.
Eighteen-year-old Sarah Valdes is reconsidering her major, cultural anthropology, because of an internship she did working in the Filipino community one summer.
Her job was to be a mentor and part-time counselor to a group of inner-city kids who felt they had no real options in life.
"It was so frustrating to see these kids drop out of school and be so negative about the future, and feel like there was nothing I could do to change their way of thinking," said Valdes.
She's thinking of changing her major to ethnic studies. The experience made her want to do more community work.
[ Golden Gater Online October 26, 1995 ]
[ back to top ]
© All Rights Reserved
HTMLized by Steve Thoemke (sthoemke@nermal.santarosa.edu)