Internship The first steps that we take in our careers can have an enormous impact on the direction that our entire life will take, which means that we should choose our first positions carefully. This is all too often not the strategy that people take because, since they are relatively lacking in experience and skills at the beginning of their careers they quite often settle for the first thing that comes to hand. This is especially true during difficult economic times like the present.

However, I would like to choose positions that help prepare me for a career spent in environmental work. I feel that there can be no more important work to do and that taking an internship in the environmental field will help provide me with the skills that I will need during my career in environmental work as well as providing me with invaluable contacts within the field.

It is important to be pragmatic when plotting one's career course. Simply because one is an idealist and wants to contribute in as significant way as possible to one's community and to the planet as a whole does not mean that one should not also go about finding a position that one is suited for and that one can, in turn, learn from. Idealism and pragmatism are not (at least in this sense) enemies of each other but rather perfectly appropriate partners.

One of the choices that one must at least eventually make within the field of environmental work is whether one wishes to work within a relatively mainstream environmental group such as the Sierra Club or the National Wildlife Federation or a...

I believe that to some extent I can only determine this by working for both types of organizations.
The position that I found (at a website specializing in jobs in the environmental field, (http://envirocitizen.org/enet/jobs) with the National Wildlife Federation, would allow me to explore what it is like to work with a large, nationally power and mainstream environmental group. I believe that this is a position for which I am already basically qualified. I have the technical skills that the internship requires (knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel, and HTML). My degree from the University of Indiana from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs qualifies me as being experienced both in environmental issues and communications.

I am not, perhaps, as experienced in political issues as this internship requires, although it seems entirely possible to me that much of the knowledge of how politics works in Washington regarding environmental policy is something that one learns on the job itself. I am relatively well versed in current affairs and have for a number of years tried to keep abreast on public policy decisions (both in the United States and abroad) that concern the environment.

I believe the fact that I am fluent in Arabic…