SBBC Internship experience

Getting a job is a job in itself. It takes time and effort to find a situation that works best for your personality and needs (location, schedule, etc). With this in mind, securing an internship abroad will take some effort on your part, although understandably not as much as full time employment.

Internships abroad is not easy... Well, that is what we have expected before but our experience is so much different. We were living in a new great place, meeting new people, taking on new responsibilities, and learning a language. That's a lot to think about and be thankful for. Sure, you may have to make copies from time to time and do the things that are generally asked of interns everywhere, but the stepping stones are bigger abroad. With international internships you are able to lay the foundation for an interesting and successful future while making the most of the present. What else can we add? Maybe BENEFITS for us:
- An opportunity to explore career fields of interest first hand.
- Application of academic knowledge in a practical work environment.
- A chance to gain "hands on" experience and contacts useful for future employment.
- Increased familiarity with the world of work and how it functions.
- A setting which broadens experiences and promotes increased self-confidence, maturity and accomplishment.
- A source of recommendations for graduate study or for post graduate employment.

Internships can offer a student great opportunities for "reality testing" an occupation of interest. All too often, students graduate without ever having conducted research on career fields of interest, without ever having spoken to people employed in career fields of interest, and without gaining hands-on experience in career fields of interest. In many situations, these graduates go on to work in occupations that they thought they would love only to realize that their perceptions of this type of work were not in line with the realities of work. This can be a sad and frustrating experience for a graduate.

Accurate information about the world of work is vital to the decision making process. Trying to make a sound decision about one's future career plans is difficult, if not impossible, without having gathered sufficient information about options. Internships represent one way of gathering information. They can help a student confirm a specific interest in an occupation or lead a student to reconsider a first choice.

Choosing the SBBC as our final internship destination was one of our best decisions we have ever made. We had such good mentors here, interesting projects we worked on and all the professionals we met. In addition to this all, this summer was not just about work. You simply can not stay in London without getting all those great things around, without absorbing the atmosphere of the historical and modern, dynamic city all in one. There is just one word for time spent here in the SBBC- amazing...