Announcing: Winter Break Externships!
In a Winter Break externship, you spend part of a single day over break
- talking to current professionals with backgrounds similar to yours,
- learning about what the organization does and how it operates day-to-day, and
- making connections between your abilities and life after graduation.
An externship helps you connect your skills to the needs of the workplace, while you learn about some of the possibilities that are available to you.
Why?
Because you’re not sure where to start. When you don’t know enough about your skills and the jobs available to you, an externship is a low-stakes point-of-entry to the whole business of figuring out your future.
Because you don’t know what you don’t know. The way many humanities majors imagine the workplace is very different from how it actually is. Spending some time around working professionals can ground your assumptions in reality.
Because you feel like you don’t know anything. That’s okay. The whole point is to learn things you don’t know. The people you meet during an externship were once in the same position you are, and they get it.
Because you don’t really see how your major fits with these organizations. Spending some time in a professional workplace will show you the value of the essential critical thinking and communication skills you gain in your major.
Because the answer to the question “Should I Apply?” is usually “YES!”
Externship Opportunities
Some are remote, some are onsite (Chicagoland or Urbana). Some may align fairly obviously with your major, many won’t (but they will show you how to connect the skills from your major with the workplace). Some are with organizations founded by Illinois humanities majors, some are not. Some offer a range of possible dates, some are available only on a specific date. Click on the links below to learn more.
- 50,000feet
- The Black Sheep
- Echo Global Logistics
- Ivor Andrew
- LAS Office of Communications and Marketing
- Oak Street Bootmakers
- Pixo
- Spurlock Museum
How to Apply
- Use the links above to learn about the available externship opportunities.
- Identify no more than three that fit with your winter break plans.
- Apply online before November 8, 2021 (use the button below).
- Get notified by November 15, 2021, if you have been accepted and matched with one of your choices.
- Complete, sign, and hand in an Externship Agreement by December 1, 2015, committing you to taking part.
- Email the externship mentor for the organization you have been matched with to introduce yourself and confirm the details of the day.
- Complete your externship!
- Fill out an externship evaluation that we will send you at the end of winter break (this gives you the opportunity to reflect on your experience and helps us know how to improve the program going forward).
