LAS internships can expand your skill set

If you are looking to develop or enhance your leadership, communication, and personal skills, applying to be a College of LAS intern will be of great benefit to you. LAS offers an array of internships where you can build meaningful relationships, be collaborative, and even engage in different projects. While being an intern, you are able to hone in on your creative skills and produce work and ideas that are authentic to you. Being an LAS intern will allow you, and those around you, to create common goals for a greater purpose. Some of our LAS interns have shared their unique experiences below. 

LAS 102 intern: Margeaux Adam
Margeaux Adam is a junior majoring in integrative biology on a pre-med track. She is currently a Transfer Advantage intern. With this position, she facilitates weekly classroom discussions with new Illinois transfer students and administers, creates, and assigns coursework. Margeaux is also able to collaborate with fellow interns and supervisors to ensure that the transfer students are succeeding during their time at Illinois. 

When Margeaux was applying be an intern, she was looking for an opportunity that would help her grow as a leader and would help give her the skills for her future career. As an intern, she has learned much from her peers and the prestigious staff. One thing she believes she will gain from this opportunity is leadership. Being an intern has allowed her to become more confident and how to command a room. Having the foundation of what it takes to be a leader under her belt will allow Margeux to take everything she has learned and apply it to helping her become a future physician. Along with gaining leadership skills, she was also able to work on her communication skills.

Revising the current LAS 102 syllabus has been one of Margeaux’s favorite projects while working as an intern. She can give her insight from a student perspective, which will help advance the syllabus in the future. 

Overall, Margeux says being an intern has been a valuable experience in her personal and professional life. Being an active part of the Illinois community is something for which she is grateful, because she is a helping hand to many. She encourages everyone to apply! 

LAS 122 intern: Elena Cannova 
Elena Cannova is a senior majoring in psychology with a career interest in clinical psychology. After she graduates, she plans to work in research. With her position as an LAS 122 intern, she has planned lessons, created homework plans, and taught her fellow students. She had the opportunity to teach the pilot class for chemical engineering James Scholar students. This year’s experience was more interactive compared to her previous semester as an intern, because she was able to create each lesson and offer her own input. 

Since Elena plans on attending graduate school, she was looking for teaching experience to not only supplement her resume but to gain experience in front of a classroom. She says it was meaningful to become a resource to incoming freshmen. Honing in on her time management, organization, and stage presence skills have been of great benefit to her. Being able to network and soak up the advice from the LAS Honors Program faculty and staff has helped her throughout her time as an intern. Learning how to think critically, how to work in a team, and how to be diligent has helped her to develop the skills she needs for her future. Elena already has seen improvement in her work, because she was able to practice while being an LAS intern. 

Life + Career Design Lab intern: Jacqlyn Anguiano 
Jacqlyn Anguiano is a senior studying organizational psychology and criminology. Her main goal is to help people enjoy their lives, especially in their places of work. Her career interest in helping people obtain this level of enjoyment is what made her apply to be an intern for the Life + Career Design Lab. She enjoys talking to people about professionalism and what they plan on pursuing in the future.

Jacqlyn’s main responsibility is to be a peer advisor to students on campus and to provide them with the appropriate resources and advice. She and the other interns at the Life + Career Design Lab have been trained on a variety of topics from studying abroad, internships, major/minor exploration, to life and career planning. You can either schedule a one-on-one session with the interns or come to the workshops they host. Part of the job is to go over the students’ wants and needs to try to help them in any way possible. 

Joining the Life + Career Design Lab team was beneficial to her, because it fits her career interests. It was important that she applied what she was learning in the classroom to real life situations. Making sure that the environment and the culture of the workplace gelled with her values and beliefs was key when finding an internship. Gaining more knowledge, learning about more resources, and gaining new techniques are the benefits she has received. Getting to learn about different perspectives is going to help with her choice of career. 

She said having the opportunity to work with international students from Japan was nothing short of amazing. It served as an opportunity to engage with a different audience and learn how to facilitate dialogue with people who were different from her. This experience has aided her by learning how to strategize and be more confident in speaking with others. Helping students who had different values, ideals, and expectations challenged her but broadened her communication skills. 

Jacqlyn encourages everyone to apply, because it can help you figure out your own plans, goals, and dreams.

ATLAS intern: Megan Resurreccion
Megan Resurreccion is a senior in the College of LAS, where she is majoring in creative writing and minoring in informatics and statistics. Upon graduation in the spring, she plans to pursue a PhD in information science/data science, with an ultimate goal of studying how we can use technology to capture data for social justice.

Learn more about Megan’s experience within this LAS Insider Blog where she shares how her humanities education will be an asset within her STEM career.

To apply for an internship opportunity in the 2020-2021 academic year, visit here.