Undergrad Isabelle Kagan used her experiences as an English major to land an internship at an international travel website.
Tell us a little bit about your internship.
During the fall of my senior year, I had the opportunity to intern with GoNomad, a website that publishes travel stories from writers all across the world. This internship was so exciting for me because it combined two of my ultimate passions, my love of travel and my love for writing!
What sort of work did you do as an intern? What did you learn?
The internship was for 3 credits, and consisted of a weekly meeting and about 2-4 hours of outside work. Our work entailed traveling to the GoNomad office every Tuesday for around three hours, where we would meet with our editor, Max, and go over our weekly tasks and duties. Each week, we would be assigned two stories on average to write, which required us to research a specific tourist activity or destination, interview the contacts provided, and write a compelling article about it. This process really helped me develop valuable experience in conducting interviews and allowed me to gain confidence working one-on-one with other journalists, photographers, and tourism officials, an incredibly useful skill in the field of travel writing. Max assisted us with improving our stories and producing interesting content that captured the essence of the event or location we were writing about. I learned so much about how to write concisely and effectively to produce appealing articles for a target audience. This internship gave me excellent experience in the fields of publishing, editing, and online media. Not only that, I gained new knowledge of unknown parts of the world, as well as a writing style I was previously unfamiliar with.
One of my articles that I was particularly proud of was my collaboration with two National Geographic journalists. I was assigned the job of writing a feature piece on a hike they were doing through the Grand Canyon. Although I was nervous at first, I quickly adapted to interviewing influential people in the industry. I plan on using this article as a prime example of my online publication work.
What were some of the benefits of this particular internship?
As an intern, you also had the opportunity to do some travel yourself and write an article about your experience. I was given the privilege of traveling to cities such as Washington D.C, where I was put in touch with the tourism board and offered admission to exciting tourist events, museums, and festivals. This was just one of the many perks of working at GoNomad. Now if I am ever traveling to a new place, my first thought is to check their tourism website for fun activities I may not have found out about otherwise.
What would you say the most valuable takeaways from this internship experience have been?
This internship provided me with hands-on experience in article-style writing, and I now have a portfolio or travel articles that I am immensely proud of. The skills I learned through this internship will stay with me in not only my professional career, but also my personal future travel plans.