Internship Programs

English 498/504-Internships in Writing and Editing

This course offers you the chance to undertake writing or editing at an organization of your choice, for credit. To enroll, you must first find an organization that would be willing to welcome you as an intern who will be working an average of 10 hours per week over the entire semester. Your primary responsibilities to that organization will be writing and/or editing. Think of this course as the chance to try your hand at writing for a particular organization that interests you, or in a particular niche industry that you'd like to learn more about. If you have no contacts in that organization or industry, you'd be surprised how many places are willing to take on an intern who is professional and organized in his or her initial contacts with them. For those students who have unsuccessfully attempted to secure internship sites on their own, the course professor, Susan Lawrence, can occasionally put you in contact with an organization seeking an intern.

Normally, the internship is unpaid. If you are working to support yourself in your studies and this organization offers you a paid internship, we can waiver the unpaid status. Whether paid or unpaid, you may accept stipends to offset expenses. In some cases, the internship can be taken for 6 hours. If the writing and editing is challenging enough that you will learn a great deal from the experience, and if you will be working 20 hours a week for one semester or 10 hours a week for 2 semesters, the internship can be counted for 6 credits. You must work out the details of such an internship at the time you enroll in it with the course professor, Susan Lawrence.

Once you have secured a site for your internship, you will need to submit an Internship Proposal to Professor Thaiss with the following information:

A. Describe your previous writing and editing experience, noting what you have done in different genres (e.g. literary research papers, workplace memos, newspaper articles, etc.). 1-3 paragraphs

B. State your self-identified strengths and weaknesses in writing and editing. Some categories to think about are the following:

  • Mastering standard edited
  • English conventions, including grammar, editing, usage, etc.
  • Mustering a successful voice or persona in one genre or another
  • Developing and implementing organizational skills, both to support your writing processes and to structure your finished written products Handling collaborative writing

C. State some plans you have for using this internship to improve upon your weaknesses.

D. Provide an initial inventory of writing in this workplace, to the best of your ability. Make a list with short commentary on each kind of writing you see—from sticky notes to annual reports.

Note the forms of collaboration (who is involved, and how?), scheduling (frequency and timing), and where and how the writing and/or editing that you will be doing fits into this overall scheme. As concerns the writing/editing you will be doing, provide a detailed account, including how much, in what form, and how often.

E. Provide the name, position, and contact e-mail for the person in this organization who will be supervising your internship.

Once you have submitted the internship proposal, you will be required to do the following:

  1. Meet at the beginning of the semester in a roundtable session with the course professor and other interns to discuss your proposals and your work. This meeting will take place during the first week of classes and is mandatory. It will be scheduled in the late afternoon or early evening.

  2. Develop and maintain a portfolio of your writing and editing during the internship. You will use this portfolio to compose a mid-term status report, to discuss your progress with the course professor in individual conferences, and to compose your end-of-term report.

  3. Provide a status report at mid-term.

  4. Meet with the course professor at intervals to assess progress.

  5. Submit an end-of-term report and discuss it, along with your portfolio, with the course professor.

Your supervisor at work will provide an assessment of your work at mid-term, using a standardized report form. At the end of the term, this supervisor will submit a final grade that he or she deems appropriate to your work, after he or she has consulted with you on this grade. The course grade is synthesized from status reports, the evaluation of the supervisor, the final report, and the portfolio. If you have questions or seek more information, e-mail Susan Lawrence.

An internship can be a great way to begin your career as a professional writer or editor! You get the chance to write or edit under a supervisor in a workplace setting, all the while reflecting on this work and analyzing is with your professor. The portfolio you create—whether three dimensional or online—can be a great boon to your career development.

For more information, please go to GMU's Nonfiction Universe.