Take my advice, apply for an internship

This semester, I had the privilege of landing a coveted paid internship as an assistant to the glass curator at the Toledo Museum of Art.

This officially marks the first time I have a regular job with a regular salary. As a double major in film/video and art history, my studies have prepared me for researching and bringing pertinent information to the table.

I'm finally doing something I actually like and have studied in school — my education is literally and figuratively paying off. I'm definitely not a job-getting or interning expert, but after interning at several different places and failing to be hired for several internships, there are a few things I've learned.

Here are some tips that might help those who have never interned or who are looking to in the future.

First, try to be comfortable with not getting paid. While I'm honestly not really okay with unpaid internships, most positions I have encountered in art-related fields are unpaid. For the last two summers, I've had unpaid internships, one of which at Spaces, an art gallery in Cleveland, and I also volunteered at the Toledo Museum of Art. The people I worked with were wonderful and I got a lot of hands-on experience I couldn't have gotten in a class. So, while not getting paid is a bummer, it will pay off eventually.

If you do land a paid internship, realize you are really lucky and try to be humble about it. I'm still trying to get over feeling like "hot-stuff" for getting paid to work.

Second, it helps to try to impress your teachers and build a relationship with them. Speak up in class, talk to them outside of class, make sure they know who you are and that you're serious and enthusiastic about what you study. They are the people who can offer credible letters of recommendation and who might be able to give you work.

The third and maybe most important point is to know specifically what you want out of the internship . I learned this from a terrible interview I once gave. During the interview, conducted on the phone, the woman asked me to tell her about myself. As I did, I also went into why I wanted to intern there, or at least I thought I did. Afterward, the woman said, "Okay, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but why exactly do you want to intern here?"

I was speechless; I thought I had just explained myself. So, I told her again and she seemed less than enthused. It wasn't until after the interview ended I thought, "Hey, why do I want to intern there? What do I really want to learn from there?" It's not enough to just want to get experience somewhere. You need to know what specific skills you want to learn, if there is someone there you want to work with and what that place has that other places don't. All of this probably seems obvious, but after learning the hard way, you realize how important all of it is.

— Kristen Breitenbach is a senior double majoring in film/video and art history.