Thursday, March 28, 2024

Internships come true

Not all summer jobs are mundane; MSU students score unique, interesting employment

April 18, 2006
Kristen Case, telecommunication, information studies and media junior —

Kristen Case will spend her summer laughing along with a live audience as David Letterman tells his signature "Top Ten" jokes.

Jackie Collens will travel the same halls of the prestigious hotel the Hilton sisters grew up in.

Raphael Rogers can still recall his brush with fame when he worked a red carpet premiere.

And Nathan Michels graduated after a semester of rescuing people from canyon cliffs.

Internships are quickly becoming the way to secure a job after graduation. For some majors, they are the ticket to graduating.

But as these MSU students prove, just because it's a summer day job doesn't mean it has to be dull.


Cracking jokes with Letterman

Case, a telecommunication, information studies and media junior, has been planning to intern at the Late Show with David Letterman in New York City since she came to MSU for her freshman orientation and heard about a student interning there.

"I watched the show forever, but I didn't realize I could get there," she said. "From that point on, I made that my goal."

She knew she had to stand out when she wrote her cover letter, which is where being a fan of the show came in handy.

"In my cover letter, the opening sentence said, 'I could give you the top ten reasons I should be your intern, but I'll save it for the interview,'" Case said.

After mailing in the application, Case received a call the day before she left for spring break, asking her to arrange for her own flight and lodgings for a trip to New York to do 10 interviews in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

"The 15 minutes I spent in the waiting room were the longest of my life," Case said.

Case said she immediately accepted the internship to work in the music department, alongside Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra.

"I get to watch the show being taped from the stage," she said. "Every day, I'll see the guests and musical performances."

Although the internship is unpaid, Case said she's not going to let money, or lack thereof, stop her from going to New York.

"I don't know how I will fund this, but I know it will be worth it in the end," Case said. "It's a dream come true."


Dreaming of the stars

Listening to actors repeat lines of the movie "Madagascar" in foreign languages might not seem all that thrilling, but for Raphael Rogers, it was the internship of a lifetime.

"It's invaluable experience," said the telecommunication, information studies and media junior, who worked for DreamWorks in Los Angeles last summer. "I learned a ton and it was really fun."

In addition to working on international casting, Rogers also worked as an usher for the red carpet premiere of the movie "Red Eye."

"It was crazy," Rogers said. "So many people scream the stars' names. I was standing there ushering people in and all these super-famous people walk by — like Frankie Muniz with his girlfriend that was way taller than him."

Rogers, who applied online and received the job after two interviews, said it was a lot of unpaid office work, but there were also some perks.

"We got to go to Steven Spielberg's personal theater and talk to executives," Rogers said, adding that he made a lot of contacts. "It was a good place to work. It wasn't paid or anything, so that part wasn't cool."


Big city living

Hospitality business junior Jackie Collens will head to The Waldorf Astoria & Towers, to become the third intern in the history of the hotel.

"I'm going to the best hotel in the world, pretty much," Collens said. "If I want to learn hospitality, I can't think of any place I'm going to learn it better."

Collens said she interviewed with five or six department heads and met with the general manager of the property when she went to New York for a follow-up interview.

"It was the most grueling interview process ever," she said, adding that the hotel called each one of her references, and administered a drug test, ran a background check and a credit check.

Besides the job itself, which will include working on different projects and learning about the operations and management of the hotel, Collens said she's also looking forward to the city life.

"I've been raised in a big city my entire life, but New York is a whole different ball game," she said. "It will be a challenge, but it's a challenge I'm ready for."

Hospitality business senior Geoffrey Ryskamp, who worked at The Waldorf last summer, said the switch to New York life was tough at first.

"I'm from Kalamazoo, so it was a big change moving to Manhattan," Ryskamp said. "It was really intimidating at first. It was a lot of people and a lot of action — almost too much. But by five or six weeks, I really fell in love with the city.

"It would be hard not to because it's such an incredible place."


Viva Las Vegas

Even though she spent her spring break there, Sarah Wolf is hoping what happened in Vegas won't stay in Vegas. The hospitality business junior interviewed at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino while she was in the city of sin.

"It was fun," Wolf said. "Within a day, I got a call from them. It was really exciting."

Wolf said she was hired to work in the human resources department, where she will work on training and benefits.

The locale was the main draw for Wolf, she said.

"I just thought it would be a great opportunity to get out of Michigan," Wolf said. "I wanted to see something different and get a little taste of the big city."

Wolf said she's looking forward to networking and gaining experience, as well as taking in local life.

"There's so much going on out there — there's never a dull moment," she said. "I'm pretty sure I'll never be bored."


Roughing it

Rappelling a stranded climber down a cliff and teaching elementary school students environmental basics made up the odd combination of skills MSU 2005 graduate Nathan Michels learned while interning at the Curecanti National Recreation Area and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado.

Michels lived in the national park last fall while he taught environmental education and took part in search and rescue missions.

"It was really beautiful," Michels said. "Right in the backyard was a 13,000-foot peak."

One search-and-rescue mission took 27 hours as Michels and other park officials had to rappel a climber down a cliff and then have him helicoptered out of the bottom, he said.

"Black Canyon is one of the biggest canyons in North America," Michels said. "It took two hours to get to the guy by road, then another four-hour hike to reach him."

The organization had been running for eight years, so the intern program was well-established, Michels said.

"They had interns do a variety of things," he said. "I worked for natural resources planting trees and I got into the classroom to work with children."

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