Many high school students don’t know what they want to do after high school. Internships are a great way to build up your resume and get experience in different fields. Colleges love seeing extracurriculars outside of school, and internships are a great way to show that. They are also a great way to start job hunting early on and begin building up that college resume by taking on an internship during high school for juniors and seniors. 

Internships allow students to gain college readiness skills as well as learning how certain job environments are like. A few internship opportunities here in Long Beach are The Port of Long Beach High School Internship, Rockefeller Kempel Architects, Trust Co of West, and more to come in the summer. 

“There are several benefits for internships for high school students,” says Ms. Mashburn, Millikan’s head counselor. “You get to network with professionals and gain experience in specific fields and gain knowledge that could be transferable not just to that field but to other fields as well.” 

Nowadays you can find internships at your fingertips, most people can simply look up a YouTube video to explain how to get an internship and good places to look. A good resource for students is the Long Beach Unified website. 

If you are going to an interview for a paid internship and you are under 18, it is helpful to have paperwork to fill out a work permit. Work permits have to first be filled out in the College and Career Center. The employers then fill out their part of the form for you to work. After you get the employer’s part of the paperwork filled out, you bring it back to the College and Career Center to be finalized as a real work permit. Having your work permit on hand could help students get an extra edge and be over prepared for internships and jobs. 

“There are labor laws in California that will guide work permits and you have to get a work permit in order to have the internship, these are [mostly] all paid internships,” Mrs. Mashburn says. “So there’s also unpaid internships that students can do as well where you wouldn’t necessarily have to have that work permit on file or anything like that. But there’s laws that sort of govern how many of our students can work based on their age and their year in school.”

SEGA senior Marianna Clark says, “Try out different things even if you’re not sure you’re going to like it.” Although having an internship is a good opportunity, it is mostly just open to juniors and seniors in high school. 

Make sure you take advantage of the resources Millikan has made available, to get ahead on your college applications and career pursuit, by making the most of these internship opportunities!