Is an internship the right choice for me?

At the end of June I finished a five-month translation traineeship at the Council of the European Union and started a position as a temporary contract agent translator at the Council. Since I finished the traineeship, I have been thinking about what I have learned during the internship and, more generally, about the importance of internships for translators and interpreters.

Is an internship the right thing for me? I am sure many translation and interpreting graduates have asked themselves the very same thing. The answer is very personal, and it most definitely depends on your personal circumstances, but there are several aspects that everyone should consider:

Is the traineeship paid or unpaid? Aside from obvious reasons, namely the fact that we live in a society that does not function thanks to good-old-fashion barter, whether or not a traineeship is paid reflects the general work practices of the company. There is quite a difference, in my opinion, between a small charity not paying its interns or volunteers and a lucrative business simply deciding not to pay trainees, or to pay them peanuts. Some "aspiring trainees" do not have a choice and simply cannot subsidise their internship, so in a sense unpaid traineeships still represent a glass ceiling that some cannot break, a disadvantage that does not stem from a person's merits, but from their socio-economic background.

Are my expectations realistic? For many recent graduates, a traineeship is their first real work experience in their desired field, so it is not surprising that they might have certain expectations of what the actual job will be like, how they will perform, how the industry works or about the progress they will make. However, I believe that expectations should be replaced by hope and motivation, as expectations serve no real purpose. Expectations only bring anxiety, fear of failure or disappointment, or they do not let us enjoy success, if we simply take it for granted. Internships have nothing to do with university life and recent graduates will have to get used to the office dynamics, to new tasks and responsabilities, and also to the fact that they still have much to learn, considering the whole purpose of traineeships is to learn by doing.

Soft skills? We should not underestimate the importance of soft skills (liaising with superiors and co-workers, staying on top of all the admin issues and learning new procedures and conventions quickly and effectively, knowing when to ask for help and when to be self-reliant). Apparently, us millenials are lacking in soft skills, according to several articles published in the past few years. Before embarking on a traineeship, it would be useful to take a long, hard look in the mirror and assess our soft skills and their impact on our professional interactions, in order to pre-empt any potential criticisms or issues that might arise.

What is my end goal? Are you simply thinking about doing a traineeship because you are bored/not sure what to do next/someone else you know applied for it and you never know, it might lead to something? As I have said, we all have our own personal circumstances and reasons, but make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. Will the internship lead to an actual contract at some point in the future? Will you be adding new skills to your CV? Will you be able to prove that you can actually apply what you have studied at university? Will this experience help you grow as a professional and as a person? Would you like to do this as a job?

Those might seem like daunting questions, but we all have our very own, personal answers to these dilemmas, and those answers should guide our choices, to give some sort of coherence to our path. We never know where the road in front of us might take us, but we should at least know where we would like to end up, so we should take that into account when deciding whether or not a traineeship makes sense for us.