Internships and a Helping Hand

I first heard of the ARRA Internship Program at UC Berkeley when I went to see my Disabled Students Program (DSP) counselor. I had originally gone to ask her for information about graduate school and for more detailed information about the GRE, but somehow the conversation turned to internships and she asked if I was participating in the ARRA program. Confused, I told her I had no idea what she was talking about. That was when she gave me some papers and explained that the ARRA was a program especially designed to help students with disabilities find internships that they are both able to do and interested in doing.

Now, if you’ve ever tried looking for an internship without help, I’m sure you know it can be quite difficult and often discouraging. Being a liberal arts major, I, of course, kept running across internships asking for science majors, and there were times when I despaired of finding an internship whose requirements I could satisfy. My other problem was that I really had no idea what kind of job I was looking for. Growing up, the only jobs I heard about ran along the lines of doctor, lawyer, or engineer. So, while I knew that there must be thousands of other kinds of jobs out there, it was a total mystery what those thousands of jobs were. My parents knew little more than I did since they were both scientists. It didn’t help my fears any that, due to my vision (or lack thereof), I wasn’t sure I could do common jobs like waiting tables even if I wanted to. What I really needed, I told myself, was to get out there and just try something—get to know how it felt to work, learn more about the types of jobs available in the real world, and hopefully find something more suited to my abilities and tastes. To that end, the ARRA internship program sounded perfect.

With that in mind I set up an appointment with the ARRA program coordinator at my school. To my delighted surprise, he was incredibly easy to talk to. He obviously knew what he was doing, and that in itself was a great comfort. We discussed my resume and he asked me about my interests. Since I loved languages and spoke Mandarin, he asked what I would think of doing translation. Another possibility might be creating educational materials for a hospital. After all, someone has to organize information so that the patients can understand procedures or conditions without needing to be medical experts, and writing just so happened to be something I knew I was good at. In that one hour I heard of more jobs I didn’t know existed than I had dared to hope for. I left the ARRA office feeling much more optimistic about finding an internship and with the enlightening realization that the skills of a liberal arts major even have a place in science and technology oriented companies.

A few days later I filled out some paperwork for the ARRA program and, while I waited to hear back from it, I turned my attention back to searching for internships on my own. I didn’t want to bank too much on the program because while I’ve heard of people who had golden apples fall into their laps, I didn’t want to place my hopes on having that kind of luck. There were several more phone calls after that between the coordinator and me as he suggested more possibilities and asked for my thoughts about them. I had decided beforehand that I was willing to try anything and I let him know as much. I wanted to experience “life out there,” whatever it may be, and hey, maybe I would discover a love for something that I didn’t even know existed. If instead I discovered a kind of work I didn’t like, that would narrow down my list and I would know to look for something different in the future. Either result would be a win for me. Because the ARRA program took my general interests into account when looking for possible internships, everything they suggested sounded like a great idea. Even the ones that didn’t sound so great at least felt like they would be good experiences to have. Doing anything was better than doing nothing.

Final exams were just around the corner when I received information from the program coordinator that there were a few people who would like to interview me. One of these interviews, he told me, would be over the phone. I haven’t had a great deal of experience with interviews and this was going to be one of the first interviews I’d ever done over the phone. I was a little nervous and I spent some time going over the more common questions people ask in interviews such as “Why are you interested in this internship?” and trying to come up with coherent answers. On the day of the interview I was practically glued to the clock because I was responsible for calling my interviewer and I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t call in late. Oddly enough, I found myself much less nervous once the interview started. I suppose by that point I had realized that being nervous wasn’t going to do me any good and really all I had to do was answer the questions honestly and let things go from there. If they wanted me, that would be great, if they didn’t, then I’d just continue looking elsewhere. The best thing that I could do for myself—that anyone can do for him or herself really—was to try. So I did, and fortunately for me I must have left a good impression because a little over a week later I got an offer.

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