Learn More, by doing on-line internship or on-line volunteering
There are at least 5 good reasons you should do it
Why NOT doing internship in-person
As a young person, it is normal to feel the need to prove that you are valuable, that your skills are applicable in real life and that future employers can recognize your value.
This is the reason why so many young people spend their summers volunteering, or working at Mc.Donalds.
However, as someone who is almost twice older than you, I have the obligation to tell you inconvenient truth. The truth is that most of the times companies honestly don’t know how to use you productively.
Change the perspective for a moment and imagine that you own a small company and that you have received a letter from a young, bright student who is willing to work for free. What tasks could you assign to them?
Your company has trade secrets, thus the apprentice cannot be allowed to touch any files nor obtain any real knowledge.
Your equipment must be used by trained personnel, and teaching someone to use scientific equipment for 1 or 2 experiments is impossible. Back in Europe, we would assign volunteer students to do some labor intensive, but low-level intellectual lab duty, including waiting for a centrifuge for 2 hours, or standing nearby during hours long extractions. Giving students to make gels with ethidium bromide (know cancerogenic) should be considered as crime, however it was a common practice. At best, students would get their names among authors on a conference paper.
Now when you understand grim reality, you know exactly what your duty will be: to carry around some dusty boxes, putting papers into folders and stocking up K-pods while gossiping.
In summary: you will be given a borderline pointless (and worthless) duty. You will spend your time commuting. You will be exposed to dust (at best, cancerogenic stuff at worst), and you will be equally clueless about real life jobs.
Advantages doing Remote Internship or Remote Volunteering
This is the very reason why we want to provide you a meaningful experience by offering you Remote opportunities for internship and volunteering.
- You don’t need to commute. Instantaneously, you can work for 1 or 2 hours more.
- There will be no idling and time wasting. Instead of spending 8 hours idling and moving boxes, you will be able to do all the work in 2 to 3 hours.
- You will be given a real task, and your results will be quantifiable. The reality of the market and internet will tell you whether your idea, and your execution of that idea were good or not.
- Learning internet culture. Having a skill to communicate clearly and effectively by sending messages is a crucial skill for the XXI century. Learn this, and your future boss and colleagues will love you.
- Learning meaningful tasks. Contrary to prevailing ethos, you will be assigned real, challenging tasks that we actually need you to do, or we would need to pay for them to be done. This is why we want to succeed
At Maecenium, we don’t believe in years of experience. We believe in brilliance. This is why you will be allowed to pitch your idea to founders. If it turns out that the idea is applicable and provably valuable, you will no longer be a volunteer. You will be hired.
Here are some ideas for you, and what we could offer for your internship or virtual volunteering:
Maecenium website is a WordPress website, built using Avada Theme. There are always some odd bugs with WP. Can you solve them? It’s a real-life situation.
SEO optimization is very important for on-line success. Would you like to find new, unexplored niches?
What about writing scientific blogs? Can you extract the essence of a scientific paper and write a post that is suitable for Scientists, Maecenas and Enthusiasts at the same time?
Building social connections. This skill is something that can land you 6 figure salary on the Day 1 of your employment. Can you spread a word in press and provide 50 strong backlinks? Can you find donors? Can you raise funds? Can you connect right people at right time? If you have that elusive gift, you will be the most wanted person on a job market.
