Where did internships come from?

Forbes.com has a historically interesting article on the “Evolution of Interns” which traces the history of internships and related types of work, and why they’ve become so important.  The full article is here, and here is an excerpt:

Almost everyone seems to agree that an internship is a valuable part of career development. But if you were in college before the 1980s, chances are you never did anything called interning. So where did the experience come from, and how did it become such a seeming necessity for today’s future job-seekers?

Experts agree that in the largest sense, internships descend from the professional apprenticeships that originated with the trade guilds of Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Master craftsmen and tradesmen took in young learners and gave them menial tasks that make filing and photocopying look plush. Apprentices served one master for most of their teen years. Then they could graduate to journeyman and start earning better wages. Often they chose to continue with the same masters.

The 1911 book Labor and Apprenticeship, by Reginald Bray, includes a section that discusses the main objectives of the apprenticeship system: supervision, training and filling job openings. It sounds a lot like today’s internships, but there are key differences.

“The current system has much less structure,” says Andrew Wender Cohen, a history professor at Syracuse University. “Apprenticeship would have gotten you into a guild, or in the early 20th century, would have gotten you into the union,” he says. “The concrete benefits of apprenticeship were more clear and were typically contractually stated.”

… Not until the late 1960s did formal internships as we know them start to appear.

As the demand for knowledge workers increased, so did the importance of the internship. “People began using it as a recruiting tool, and that’s what it is now,” Davis says. Most recruiting happens, she adds, in the finance, entertainment and health care industries, so that’s where many internships are. She adds that when internships really came in, during the 1980s, they were developed first by business schools.

… The internship has proved effective in preparing many for today’s job market, and experts don’t think it’s about to change substantially, at least for now. “If there is a big change,” Gross says, “it will be brought about by technology.”

Alternatives to Traditional Offices

I awoke in the middle of the night last night with a thought- people’s workspaces are designed to keep them chained to their desk.  (work must be subconciously bugging my brain if I wake up with deep thoughts about being chained to a desk…)

Look at your desk.  You’ve got your computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse.  Then you’ve got your cell phone, within arms-length of the computer.  The trash can (and hopefully recycling bin) are also within reach.  If you’ve got a calendar on the wall, it’s probably just a couple inches away.  You almost never have to leave your desk during the day.  And in an environment like that, it’s easy to get lazy, physically AND mentally.  Creativity, innovation, and development can all slow down when there’s no need for you to turn more than a few inches in either direction for a full 8 hours every day.  And forget motivation.  Motivation is draining away.

Why not change the way we work by literally changing the way we work?  I thought I’d experiment with this. 

I put my trash and recycling bins directly behind me across the office.  Now I have to not only turn completely away from the computer to throw something out, I have to either throw it for real (which is just plain fun) or get up and bring it to the can.  Either way, I’m moving more than I was before.  AND I’m allowing myself to stop focusing on my computer for a few seconds, which almost always distracts me into doing something else.  And anything that gets a tech-obsessed person like myself away from the computer is a good thing.

I do resume reviews on top of my bookshelf.  No, I’m not perched up there, but I am standing completely and resting my arms on top of it.  It’s the perfect height to stand and correct resumes, again, getting me out of my chair and moving around.  And, again, it focuses my attention away from the computer and more towards my immediate environment.

I take a few minutes every day to sit in the chairs on the other side of my desk, where my students sit when they come in for advising.  I see how other people see my office.

I took down my lousy, uncreative bulletin board and created an inspiration board in it’s place.  This idea came straight from Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.  I’ve already chronicled my love for the inspiration board here.

What ways can you see yourself reorganizing your workspace to change your behavior, your motivation, your creativity, and your development?

ps- here is a version of my dream office.  pps- it’s in my home.  Some day!

FedEx Offers FREE Resume Printing!! March 10th Only

FedEx Office (used to be FedEx Kinkos) will offer free printing for people’s resumes on Tuesday, March 1oth.  Free and timely?  Now that’s handi.  Here are the details:

“The company invites customers to take advantage of this one-day event by visiting any of its 1,600+ FedEx Office Print and Ship Centers in the United States during regular business hours.  This offer is good for 25 black-and-white resume copies per customer and is only valid for orders placed and picked up in-store.  The copies will be printed single-sided on resume-quality paper.”

While it’s only 25 copies, it’s still a very nice gesture on their part, considering that if all 11.6 million unemployed Americans (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) took advantage of their deal, that would amount to 275 million free copies!  Press Release here.

Handi website- TinyURL

Alright, as you might have been able to tell, handiwork has taken a backseat to some of my other projects at the moment. (http://job.ology.com  and http://thedizzles.wordpress.com) but I think I’m ready to jump back into it! (As I write this, I picture myself posting this with every good intention to post something again soon, only to return 30 days later…).

Anyway, I discovered something that is probably old news for other bloggers out there, but might come in handi for some of you. It’s called http://tinyurl.com. If you need a web address (url) shortened for any reason, this is the place to do it! It’s free and easy and useful, several things that make it handi in my book.

Why would you need to shorten a URL? Here are a few reasons to get you started:

If you’re on Twitter (like I am finally!! www.twitter.com/briewr) you have a very finite number of characters you can use to post a message. If you want to alert someone to a website, long URLs can waste your characters. TinyURL shortens any website into, quite literally, a tiny URL.

If you want to send an online article around to friends or coworkers, and you want to make sure that they are able to paste the whole, unbroken URL into their web browswer to read it, TinyURL helps you to create as short a URL as possible, making it less likely that your link won’t work.

If your business has a website that other people need to use often, but the URL is too long to remember, TinyURL can make it short and memorable for you. An example: The college where I work has a job search website for students/alums. The original web address is ridiculously long and difficult to remember. If I want students to remember the website off the top of their heads, I’ll create a TinyURL for them.

Ciao, Handiwork is off to Italy!

handiwork will be offline until Monday, January 12th for a trip to Italy!! Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year, and stay tuned for posts in the New Year!