SPP Students Share Summer Internship Experiences

SPP students gathered for the inaugural SPP Lunch & Learn to learn more about the recent internship experiences of two second-year MPA students, Lucia Sobekova and Saman Sardar. Ann Gagliardi, the SPP Director of Career Services and Alumni Relations, introduced the event, which was entirely organized by SPP students.

Sobekova spent 12 weeks last summer – "not nearly enough time" – interning at the International Crisis Group in Bogota, Colombia. One of the great attractions of this internship for her was the fact that Crisis Group was also her Passion Project client. In addition to increasing her fluency in Spanish, Sobekova also honed her communication skills. "I spoke to diverse audiences, people from all backgrounds," she says. She also did valuable research for Crisis Group, and for her Passion Project. She hopes to organize a public event at SPP in spring 2016 about the Colombian peace process.

With support from Passion Project Mentor Jon Greenwald, Sobekova secured her internship during the winter of her first year in the MPA program. Sardar, on the other hand, had a different experience. She applied to dozens of organizations during the winter and spring terms, and only received responses from some of them. She remembers the experience as particularly stressful and discouraging, but she responded by rallying her forces and continuing the search. Gagliardi commented that this happens sometimes, and that her advice to students in these circumstances is to focus on finding ways of channeling frustration into additional positive steps towards landing an internship, such as continuing research to identify further organizations and vacancies of potential interest and intensifying networking and other outreach, ideally with support from SPP's Office of Career Services. Sardar commented that a culture of information sharing that developed among SPP students was invaluable in the process. When at last Sardar received an offer of an internship with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) in Bangkok, she had to scramble to get her visa and take care of other paperwork. She laughs now remembering that she received two further internship offers shortly before she left for Bangkok.

Sardar's internship experience differed from Sobekova's in other ways too. While Sobekova worked primarily with Colombian colleagues and spoke, wrote, and read Spanish much of the time, Sardar does not speak Thai and worked mostly with people who were not from Thailand. Her primary responsibility as the office's communications intern was to increase ADPC's media outreach. She also did "a lot" of writing. "The highlight of her ADPC experience was being involved in the launch of the SERVIR-Mekong project that the organization initiated in August 2015. Sardar explained that the project uses geospatial data to enable more informed decisions about how to manage the environment.

Both Sardar and Sobekova focused in their remarks on the many ways in which their internships enhanced their professional skills. Both also commented on how their experiences have helped them develop an increased sense of focus that will aid them in their long-term job searches. They also concurred in describing their internships as valuable experiences, and felt they had been able to make meaningful contributions to the work of the organizations that hosted them. "Results were expected, and you had to produce in the time that was given," Sardar says.

You can learn more about other SPP student internship experiences here.