Weighing Your Options…

With summer quickly approaching, many students are now thinking about what they are going to do with their break.  For some summer will be a time to travel abroad, for others it means hanging out with family or friends, and with others it means summer school.  However, for a large amount of Cal students, summer equals internships.  Yet a common question that the Career Center Peer Advisors here is that students never know where to start looking.  Well I’m here to tell you that there are many options out there (Yes, there really are!), one of which is interning with the Department of State.

When I started looking for internships I never considered working for the Department of State.  I wanted to go abroad and besides that I thought I wasn’t interested in government or public policy.  However, I soon learned that working with the State is a great way to get an internship!  I started looking up more information and discovered that the Department of State offers an internship to Africa, which is completely paid for!  This fact surprised me (probably like it just surprised you!) and I started to do more investigation.  I found out that UC Berkeley is the only other school besides UCLA in California that has a Diplomat in Residence at our local university.  Our Diplomat’s name is Anne O’Leary and she knows a vast amount of information about careers with the Department of State, specializing in the Middle East.  With Anne’s help I was able to learn more information about the summer internships with the Department of State, and working with her I eventually got an internship at a US Embassy in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s capitals.  Ultimately what I learned is to never overlook any opportunities based on face value – if you dig deeper you just might be surprised to learn about the plethora of options out there, just like how I discovered all that the Department of State has to offer.

by Peer: Kimeshia Thomas, 3rd Year, Interdisciplinary Field Studies