Peer Career Consultant Blogs

Doing a school-year internship while taking classes full-time can often be overwhelming for students. Personally, I did an internship during the school year and found that balancing this commitment with my full-time course load and extracurricular activities was definitely a task.  However, it was during this time that I really understood the value of time management, which is the key to balancing multiple activities at once. Taking all of these factors into consideration, I believe the best way to handle multiple commitments at once is to create and adhere to a schedule.

When I was doing an internship during the school year, I wanted to challenge myself to successfully balance this commitment along with my courses and other activities, without dropping any of them. Before the start of the quarter, I created a schedule for myself where I would be present at my internship in the morning, have my classes in the afternoons, attend any club/organization meetings in the evenings, and do my homework at night.  Additionally, I always tried to find time between activities to relax, because it’s easy to get burnt out when you’re managing multiple activities. Finding time for myself has often helped me reflect on how I’ve been doing, and get motivated to approach a new set of tasks in the coming days.  Along with creating a schedule at the beginning of the quarter, I found that setting goals every week helped me accomplish a lot in each of my activities. It gave me a better sense of the tasks I
needed to complete throughout the week, rank these tasks based on their importance, and budget enough time towards completing each of them.  Additionally, setting goals for myself taught me that I don’t always have to stick to the schedule I created at the beginning of the quarter; for example, during midterms and finals weeks, I often found myself focusing more on school than any other activities, and I would let my internship supervisor know in advance that I wouldn’t be able to contribute as much during these weeks. Ultimately, internship supervisors know that
school comes first for all students, so they would be understanding of your situation and reduce your workload during these times.

Finally, I think that successfully doing an internship during the school year really boils down to timing. While internships are a great way to build experience, you should never feel pressured into doing one during the school year just because you see others doing it. There are many people that wait until the summer to do an internship to focus more on school during the academic year, and that’s completely fine as well. When you decide to do an internship is your choice, but a key skill that’ll be applicable to your internship, regardless of when you do it, is being able to manage your time effectively. 

If you have any internship or career search questions, please email careerconsultant@scu.edu.