<p>Okay, so after finishing my first year in college, I rested for a couple of weeks and started my internship. I've done an unofficial internship (that ended in a complete failure), tutored and worked as a TA for younger students before college. I got paid and honestly, biggest reasons for doing them were money and my resume. However, this summer, I wanted to gain work experiences even if there was no/little payment so I got one internship. Not too big but decent, you know? I've spent a couple of days here, and I have become one of those zombie Interns who do nothing. (Not even photocopying!!) My purpose of gaining some experiences is slowly becoming defeated every day I come to work and I am actually considering quitting and building my own project as a part of my resume. I haven't decided on any specifics but I just feel like it will be more worthwhile, productive and interesting than being a zombie from 9 am to 6 pm. So my question is, should I continue my internship, even if there seems to be no gaining on my side regarding experiences, or work on myself (reading, exercising, independent project)? HELP!</p>
<p>You kind of make it hard to answer this question because you don’t state whether you are currently volunteering or are being paid by this ‘company’ as well as failed to mention what your major is and thus makes it difficult to provide any meaningful feedback you might be able to use.</p>
<p>Oh well I did imply but guess it wasn’t clear. I am not getting paid. My major is psychology and before I applied for this internship, I was torn between English and marketing for a minor. I was leaning toward English/literature so I got this internship at a magazine company but being here and seeing how people work here are not at all what I thought it would be like and I am determined to cross off English my list of possible minors. With that given, do you have any advices for me??</p>
<p>a minor that is relevant to employers needs instead of your own interests(you already took psychology which I assume is due to enjoyment/ease and not employment considerations)</p>
<p>e.g. statistics, economics, management, finance, accounting, etc.</p>
<p>Yes, so I was thinking marketing/management as my minor. But now, the problem is my internship at this company is completely irrelevant to what I will be looking into when I try to get a job. I will most likely be applying to places with PR, marketing, management, etc. But this compnay I am interning at currently is a magazine company and I am not even working for their marketing department. Should I stay or try to look for another internship? (My school starts late in September so I might be able to get one close to my future career)</p>
<p>Spin it. At least you have something to place on your resume, most incoming sophomores do not so you’re still doing OK.</p>
<p>This is what I suggest doing.
Make a list of 500 careers/industries/fields you’d consider going into. Try to rank them.
Find out areas where there is significant overlap in terms of the requirements.
pick a minor in something relevant.</p>
<p>if you have NO IDEA what you’re doing, general management is an OK minor as is economics. I’m a strong proponent of learning accounting as the skill is useful EVERYWHERE. I’ve heard a lot of marketing firms prefer accounting majors with minors in marketing over marketing majors with minors in accounting(which makes sense, accountants are traditionally focused on getting good bang/$ on things whereas the traditional marketer is focused on getting huge, huge numbers at any cost whether it’s worth it or not)</p>
<p>No one can decide for you unfortunately. I don’t want to be no fun, but I will say psychology is considered a more worthless major in terms of transferable skills. If it’s your passion but you’re also career focused, consider majoring in something else, doing the bare minimum for said major and taking courses with some overlap with psych wherever possible and then taking a psych minor and really honing in on that. It’s not fun, it’s not enlightening but it is effective. That said I basically sold my soul. I love economics, I hate math and I hate accounting. I’m effectively majoring in math/econ and minoring in statistics and accounting. I hate math, I really hate stats in particular and I don’t enjoy accounting. But I’m getting through it because I want to gain skills. I’d rather suffer a little so that I might be as prepared and capable as possible for my own future. Truth be told it’s not too bad. I’m doing the bare minimum for my major requirements and minor requirements and am then taking lots of classes which are just fun and interesting(fun and interesting to me is finance, management and the like I love general business classes including economics and they’re easy for me because I have a passion and it’s intuitive)</p>
<p>xelink, thanks for a bunch of realistic advices. As for the internship, I think I’m going to stick with it. Like you said, not all rising sophomores get the opportunities and I might as well as cherish mine. And for my major/minor, once I get back to school in September, I might try to put your advice into my scheduling. I’ve been conflicted this whole summer about what to do because the more I talk to people, the harder it seems to get a decent job these days, even with a fine college degree. So anyways, thanks again!</p>
<p>I know this was a week and a half ago, but consider a couple of things.</p>
<p>When you posted, you said you had been there for a few days… a few days can’t give you a good idea of whether you will like a job, especially if you liked it enough to accept an offer they made to you. </p>
<p>One thing I have learned is that you will never have <em>nothing</em> to do unless you don’t want anything to do. If you’re bored, talk to a superior about finding work to do. If they have nothing and give you silly, meaningless or amorphous tasks, then finish those tasks quickly, and then start watching things.</p>
<p>If you are working somewhere that isn’t giving you work, the company is not perfectly run, which means there is a great opportunity to improve it. Take the time that you would be doing nothing to explore inefficiencies in the way they run the business. To use a simple example, if you find that paper supplies are located in a room that doesn’t have a printer/copier/fax machine, find a way to store paper in the more logical room, even if that involves moving things around. A little thing like that may seem like nothing, but it could show a supervisor that you can actually do something to help their business. It’ll also give you something to do when you’re bored.</p>
<p>Stumbled across this today, and I know that it has been a while since OP posted this. However, I think this will be useful in your case: </p>
<p>[Nobody</a> Has Time for Interns - Jodi Glickman - Harvard Business Review](<a href=“http://blogs.hbr.org/glickman/2011/07/nobody-has-time-for-interns.html]Nobody”>Nobody Has Time for Interns)</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>