You’re jealous, aren’t you? I can’t describe how pumped I am that Evan is going to spend the summer with me and my team here at Gateway. Hopefully Evan doesn’t have a “typical internship” like the cartoon above describes… ha! Just before Christmas, he contacted me asking about doing a summer internship with me. Over spring break he came for a visit just to see everything for himself and I’m pretty sure that sealed the deal… both for him and for us. It’s going to be a great summer.
I’m a big believer in internships. The knowledge and experiences you get from the hands on work during an internship are priceless. I truly believe that the experience you get during internships during college significantly determine your first job out of college. Actually, many good internships turn into jobs, so it’s important that you pick great places to intern.
Evan isn’t going to be your normal intern though. I first met Evan when he was a 6th grader essentially “interning” under Ryan Frank, which he’s continued to do all these years since. Evan is coming to Gateway with a load of experience already, he’s just looking for a different experience, which he will get. Actually, I’m hoping that Evan will help us develop a more structured internship that we can begin to offer in the coming years.
So, those of you know know Evan (if you read K magazine, he writes the last page of every issue), give me some suggestions on good “intern” tasks. You know, things like organize the crayons in the preschool rooms or inventory the goldfish supply. I’m totally open to your suggestions. What’s the worst internship taks you’ve ever had to do?
As an intern in children’s ministry I:
Answered incoming calls and answered questions about the upcoming summer programs (VBS, Camp etc)
Visited 20 – 30 children’s ministry websites and summarized what they were doing on them.
Sorted all of the toys in the preschool room and labeled the bins so all the toys were in the right bins. (lasted all of 5 min once the kids got in the rooms)
Filled up 1,000 helium balloons, only to discover I had been given the wrong color.
Scraped gum off of the bottom of the tables.
Was in charge of coffee and lunch runs once a week.
Spent a lot of time cutting, preparing and making craft samples.
Just to name a few things from my 2.5 years of internships in college.