Keeping Balance While You Have an Internship

My name is Ally Fisher and I am a Junior here at Temple University studying Advertising on the account management track. This semester I had the chance to intern at Cohere, a branding agency in Center City. While this hasn’t been my first internship, this has definitely been my most involved internship. An average day for me would be finishing my morning class and heading right to the office and then leaving around 5 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When I am in the office I am always busy, there is never a moment where I would be sitting there doing nothing. I always came into the office with all sorts of tasks that would keep me busy all day, sometimes they would even take me more than one day to complete. But, I learned so much and gained more experience than I could ever ask for.

That being said, it is important to make sure that you are leaving enough time to balance your work life and your school life. You definitely don’t want your internship to affect the way you perform in any of your classes. But you also don’t want to let the amount of work you have in your classes to affect the way that you are performing at your internship. There are certain things that you can do before and during your internship to make sure you’re keeping everything balanced. An internship is supposed to give you amazing experience and the last thing that you want to do while you’re there is to be stressing about all the work you have to do at home. By doing this you won’t be focused on the work that needs to be done at your internship. Keeping a good balance between work and school should definitely be your number one priority.

One thing that you can do to keep balance in your life is before you even start your internship make sure that you are not overloading yourself with work. If you are taking a lot of classes or a lot of classes that need your full attention, then maybe now isn’t the best time to get an internship. You don’t want to burn yourself out, make sure that you are getting your schoolwork done. The best way to do this is to plan out your classes and what you want to take before you start looking for an internship. See what your workload is going to be like and if you think that you won’t have enough time to dedicate to your internship then now might not be the right time for one.

Another way that you can make sure you are balancing your schoolwork and internship is to make sure you are organized. I can’t stress how much my planner has helped me this semester, or else I’m afraid that I wouldn’t remember anything! Being able to write out all my assignments and know what I have to get done for that week really helps me. By doing this I can see what I have due each week and if I need to take a day to catch up it’s always fine to reach out to your internship and let them know. Reaching out to them and explaining your situation will help you out in the long run.

Having an internship while trying to balance your classes can be challenging at times, but getting that experience once it’s over is definitely worth it. While you want to make sure you don’t stress yourself out all you have to do is follow these tips and you will make your internship worthwhile.