In my 20s, I was too shy to reach out to successful DPs and directors for an internship or to shadow them. I see young people nowadays doing that all the time. I think that experience would have been cool.
While I was at Cornell in engineering, I was an engineering co-op student, and that turned out to be very valuable because we'd go out every other term to work in industry and have that close association with industry.
I only got interested in radio once I talked my way into an internship at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1978, never having heard the network on the air.
My experience at the White House was invaluable.
Students today need experience to get a job, and they need a job to get experience. The Chegg Champion program provides students with a real-world working experience that actually offers financial rewards.
Being able to access that Stanford alumni network was huge - I actually interned at PayPal while I was at Stanford and learned a lot. Being in that environment and learning about it as a student was really fun.
When I was growing up in San Francisco, one of the experiences that changed my life was my first paid internship - a summer job at The Family School.
All I cared about was 'TRL.' I was studying communications at school, and one day before class, I heard about the 'Search For An Apprentice' program.
Create a list of your intentions for your work. Then research available internships and/or companies that you are attracted to based on that personal North Star. Once that is clear, you begin outreach to people connected to industries you're passionate and/or curious about.
That was my trick. I interned a lot.
I knew that I wanted to intern at 'Teen Vogue' from the moment the first issue hit newsstands. Luckily, the team at Polo Ralph Lauren, where I interned during high school, really believed in me and arranged for an interview with the editors.
If you knew the upward mobility that South Dakota's kids have gotten from the opportunity to intern and to work and to be employed and to have upward mobility in that company and move on, it's been phenomenal for South Dakota.
I did some internships, worked on some campaigns, and then moved to D.C.
If you're interested in a 'Teen Vogue' internship, take note: it's not all fun and games! Working at a magazine requires a ton of energy and endurance from its interns and editors alike.
