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I was one of eight Lafayette juniors who spent last fall in the Lafayette-affiliated program at Huron University USA in London. The Huron program offered the opportunity to partake in internships during the semester. Each student met with the career service counselor at Huron to begin the interview process. After several interviews, each student was placed in the internship of their choice.
Tricia Peyser, Lauren Mitinas, Deborah Stellar, and I were among the students who participated in internships, working at least 20 hours per week. The internships placed us in professional settings that were compatible with our career visions and aspirations and, we hoped, would enable us to focus more specifically within the fields that interested us.
For Tricia, an economics and business major from Huntington, N.Y., this certainly held true. She received an internship at Prudential Bache Securities, in the financial district of London, as the intern for the institutional equities sales department. Tricia helped traders place market orders for the stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and placed buy and sell orders, while assisting the sales traders. Tricia worked five to six hours a day, five days a week.
“The most interesting part of the internship was working in a foreign business environment with people who held many of the same positions as those I had worked with at my previous internships in the U.S., and seeing how the English work environment is drastically different,” she says. Last summer she interned at Prudential Securities in New York, where she worked on the institutional equity block trading desk. After graduation she will be working at Prudential full-time.
Another economics and business major, Lauren Mitinas of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., interned at HSBC, one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world. As assistant to the chief automotive and pan-European steel financial analyst, Lauren had a wide range of responsibilities. She researched and analyzed market conditions, contributing to seven major reports on the automotive industry; completed multiple spreadsheets using Excel, and compiled information for macroeconomic forecasting models.
“I enjoyed having an experience similar to Wall Street, which made the transition less overwhelming for me when I began working on Wall Street last summer. While I learned a great deal and thoroughly enjoyed my experience as an analyst, I realize it may not be the right career for me. I would prefer to be involved in a position which requires more person-to-person interaction, such as a consultancy.”
Deborah Stellar of Wellesley, Mass., a government and law major, had a very different internship experience. She worked at The Sports Cafe on Regent Street, a theme restaurant. As a marketing intern, her responsibilities included helping with promotions and planning events, including a party for the Rugby World Cup Final, which she attended, meeting many exciting people. She also designed and implemented a promotion to bring American students to the cafe, which is a major hot spot for London nightlife. Deborah stated that the most memorable part of her experience was ”
“The most memorable part of the experience was working with British people in a real work environment,” she says. “I was marketing something that interested me and directed my career focus towards marketing.”
As for me, I chose USA Today, where I was the advertising intern. I coordinated the advertising for various European USA Today clients, assisted in the advertisement layout for the European edition of the daily newspaper, monitored the accuracy of U.S. news stories published in the European edition, and compared USA Today with the competitors’ publications for errors in layout, accuracy of articles, and placement of advertisements.
I enjoyed working in the environment of a different culture. It helped me to realize that I would like to pursue a communications-media career that involves a lot personal interaction, such as public relations. This summer I worked as the public relations intern for the Jim Henson Company in New York.
We all agree that interning in London not only furthered our education by giving us hands-on experience, but also helped to shape our career goals for the future.
Leslie Rosamilia of Morristown, N.J., is a double major in English and art