Mike Wilson
LA 200
March 11, 2011
Sold on a Worthwhile Experience
For the summer of 2010, I worked as an advertising and marketing intern for Classic Properties in Dunmore, PA, a borough of the Scranton area. This was an unpaid position that I volunteered to take on in order to gain professional experience and to add some extra material for my resume. Since I was a freshman, my instructors at Penn State had stressed the importance of an internship experience and its attractiveness to employers. Thus, I felt as though my last summer before graduation was a crucial time to fulfill this commitment. The reason that I chose this particular position at Classic was because its relative proximity to my house meant that I could take the summer classes that I needed to complete at my local Penn State Worthington-Scranton campus as well as earn money at my job working at CVS. This advertising/marketing internship lasted from May 2010 until August 2010 and took up about twenty hours of my week. Needless to say, this was the busiest summer of my life. However, even though I don’t plan on entering the professional world of real estate, and at some times the work that I was expected to do at Classic seemed unimportant to me, I can definitely say that I greatly benefitted from the experience and took away much from it.
I was first made aware of the internship opportunity through my sister-in-law, Phoebe. One night when we were having a family dinner together over my junior year spring break, I mentioned that I would be seeking out an internship for the summer. At the same time, I mentioned that it would be difficult to find one that accommodated my unique situation: as a former Accounting major, I had an extra amount of credits that I needed to complete to fulfill the requirements for my Sociology major. In order to graduate on time, I would have to take some courses over the summer, two of which I would need to attend in person at my local branch campus. I also needed to...