As part of the Honors Program’s new process of tracking all of your amazing experiential learning journeys, we are excited to share many of the responses to our students’ pre- and post- experience questionnaires on this blog. A few have already been featured, but I’m pleased to share yet another life-changing internship story, as told by Sarah Nelson. Plus, she shared a few shots from her snapchat story. Which, as you all know, I love to do myself…
EXPERIENCE INTERNSHIPS: HER CAMPUS MEDIA
I’ve been involved with Her Campus since my first semester at Iowa. As a journalism student, I wanted to get involved in publications to both improve my skills and to get some writing experience. I joined Her Campus Iowa because I loved the idea of writing for an online magazine specifically for college women. In my sophomore year, I became the Editor-in-Chief of the Iowa chapter of Her Campus and have loved leading the chapter ever since. However, I was curious how things worked at the national level, so in the fall semester of my third year at Iowa, I decided to apply for a remote editorial internship with Her Campus Media, which is located in Boston. And I got it!
During my semester-long internship, I wrote a lot, as you can see on my author bio page on the Her Campus website. I wrote many different kinds of articles, including features, personal blog posts, viral listicles, and current events blog posts on news, fashion, beauty, and pop culture. One of my favorite articles that I wrote during the semester was about two college women in California who started a nonprofit to eliminate the tax on feminine hygiene products. I also really enjoyed writing an article about diversity in the publishing industry after interviewing the Editor-in-Chief of People StyleWatch. I absolutely loved writing a fun little viral article called, “15 Things Only Student Leaders Understand.” Some of the articles that were particularly challenging to write were more personal articles. One of these was “What To Do When A Friendship Is Falling Apart,” and another was about my relationship status and what being single means to me. These more personal topics were more difficult to write on just because it’s hard writing something so personal that you know so many people will see, but in the end it was very worth it because I got great feedback on those pieces.
I also got to do a bunch of other cool things like find old yet relevant content to edit and republish; transcribe phone interviews my supervisors did with people like Chuck Todd and Lauren Berger, the Intern Queen; and review new writer applications to see who qualified for an edit test. It was a lot of work and so much fun!
It was great to write different types of articles and get feedback on them from both my supervisors and from readers across the country and around the world. Seeing my articles shared hundreds of times on Facebook and Twitter by people I didn’t even know was unreal and so humbling. There’s just something so special about imagining people in completely different places with completely different backgrounds relating to my experiences and writing.
Because of my experience with Her Campus, I have been exposed to whole new world of journalism and writing. Online magazines offer such great opportunities for writers, and I’m excited to say that working for an online magazine of some kind is now my dream job. In fact, a goal of mine is to launch my own online magazine someday! I’m very passionate about kindness and philanthropy and doing good, so I would really love to start a website where we write about the good things people are doing for others all around the world. Thanks to my experience with Her Campus, I now know a little more about the online magazine industry!
Note to Self 