The Best Day Ever!

I could seriously jump for joy! Today could quite possibly be the best day ever!!! You may be thinking to yourself “Self, today doesn’t seem very special. What is this girl talking about?” Well, let me tell you! Today is the day that I got an internship with Compassion International! For those of you who are currently asking yourself a new question “Self, what is Compassion International?”  Compassion is a Christian child advocacy ministry which desires to release children around the world from the grips of poverty through education and sponsorship. They currently sponsor 1.2 million children in 26 countries!

 I have been involved with this ministry since high school when I began to sponsor my first child. Since that point my sponsor child has left the program and because I am now a broke college student I could not support another one. I found out in August that Compassion was hiring college interns for the 2012 summer and immediately knew I HAD to apply. Unfortunately I could not apply until December, but even then I could not guess the journey I would go through from that point until now.
There are three phases of this application process and with every stage I began to get more and more anxious about the possibility of me working for an organization in which I was so deeply invested. I spent hours completing the first part of the application, and turned it in just in time for the deadline. When I found out I had an interview with human relations (which is the first part of the screening process) I was so excited and throughout my interview I knew that the interviewer knew it because I was talking in circles and even got confused about what I was saying. Then, I moved on (to my surprise) to the final phase of the interview process. In this phase I interviewed directly with the people with whom I would be working directly - my supervisors. That’s right plural! There were two! So I was extremely nervous and decided it was time to study! I then continued to talk to about five different people, including my wonderful boss, about interview skills and the ways I could make this time with my supervisors impressionable! I guess it worked because, today, I received an email from compassion that said in big blue letters:
“Congratulations:  The Supervisors have selected to hire you for their 2012 Compassion Internship Program Position!” Now, I know that emails are just words on a screen to you, but to me this is the most beautiful email I have ever received. I am confident that I have this position for a reason and I am so excited about the opportunities to learn and grow throughout my time there!

Now, for those of you considering an internship for yourself here are a few tips:

-          Find a company that you are excited about working for! If you are not passionate about who you are working for your job will be miserable

-          Find a position that you are excited about and start preparing for it now! If you look at the position ahead of time it can more completely prepare you for the application process and you now have time to do those extra things which will make you stand out from the rest of the applicants.

-          Make sure you are prepared! If that means for you spending hours sharpening your interview skills do it! If that means dancing around your living room right before, do it! If that means dressing up for a phone interview, DO IT! (I may or may not have done all these things)

-          Realize it is not the end of the world. If you get the position that is amazing, but if you don’t then it’s not a big deal. There will be others, and you will get those and learn just as much if not more from that opportunity!