Parenting college students during their college years should include encouraging internships. The college years are a once-in-a-lifetime experience for emerging adults. Moms and Dads serve as good advisors when they encourage their students to seek out internships in fields of their interest.

College internships are generally summer employment opportunities that offer job exposure in a particular field of interest, giving college students an introduction to important people who may, in the future, become valuable contacts. It is important that parents remind their students that contacts have contacts. Every contact may know someone else who will be able to provide the student with subsequent employment opportunities.

Parents should stress the importance of having a job experience. Their student will gain experience while making valuable contacts through college internships. Job mentors can also provide references that will be needed when the student is seeking a job after graduation. Always be building your resume. Great advise to college students.

Parenting College Students - Assess the Profession

Maturing young adults learn about themselves and about life through out their college experience. Summer jobs provide the job exposure necessary to assess the profession of their choice. College internships can also be experiences through which students determine whether they enjoy a particular job experience sufficiently to make it a career.

A winning strategy for success suggests that college students should be encouraged to seek internships. This experience may open their eyes to experiences they otherwise would never have considered.

Parents should encourage their student to push through their discomfort and "Try it, you might like it." Actually the student may be very surprised. When a student is being productive, the parent's tendency to worry about binge drinking, late night partying, and other potentially harmful behaviors is reduced. Through the internship process young adults have an opportunity to develop both financial and time management skills. This is a real life experience that cannot be learned in a classroom.

Parenting College Students - Heartfelt Advice

Encouraging college students to have real life experiences puts them on the right path for life. The value of internships is a strategy for a lifetime of professional success. College internships can be an opportunity for students to have a foundation for their adult working careers.

Mentors familiarize the intern with the mechanics of a profession, and then they can help groom the young adults for success in their chosen field. The parents provide encouragement and support needed for adult children to perform at an optimum level. The best part of an internship is it can place a student in a favorable position for hire upon graduation.

Post graduation, a potential employer needs to know that a graduate has the potential to be a good employee. The employer needs to assess whether the graduate can be successful in a work environment. Can they get along with others? If there is no work history and no internship, the potential employer has nothing that tells them this applicant can come to work every day. A graduate with a 4.0 grade point average but no work history may lose out getting hired to a graduate with a 3.0 grade point average with a work/internship history.

Internships often turn into a major job success for graduates. Additionally, it decreases the anxiety that often accompanies the hunt for employment upon graduation. It is a "Win-Win" situation. The new graduate has immediate employment and the employer gets an employee that will quickly adapt to the work environment.