Balancing Classes and Internship Role

During my fall semester, I was both a full-time student and a research assessor at CPRE. I was very eager about my position and getting experience in data collection. Because we were working with Philadelphia School District, our schedule was very concrete. We dedicated two days of the week to being in schools, assessing students, and returning to the office to input/record data. For your first internship role, I do recommend taking on something that has fixed ours until you figure out your workload and your work/study schedule. Once you have a routine of “from this time to this time I’m reading/writing/etc.,” then you can take on larger internship roles that may require a more flexible schedule. Before you begin classes, it is imperative that you think out your schedule. Many of us may be coming from full-time jobs and having four classes a week may seem like we have a lot of “free time.” But as a graduate student, your job is to be reading, writing, and learning during those hours you would normally be at work. So, on days you don’t have class, imagine that your job (from 7am-4pm) is to be productive. You should have a book in hand, writing something, researching something, etc.