Intro: [music] Welcome back to The Daily Utah Chronicle’s opinion podcast. I’m your host, Estella Weeks, and you’re listening to Point of View.Estella Weeks: So we are here with Cameron Vakilian. Cameron's LinkedIn would describe him as the Director of Advising, Outreach and Experimental learning for the College of Humanities. But I would love to hear how you would describe your position here at the U?Cameron Vakilian: Yeah, actually and so that is my former position. I will say Director of Advising, outreach and experiential learning is what I was doing for the College of Humanities. I haven't really announced this, so it totally and it's not on my LinkedIn or anything. So you are getting me in a complete transition here, but very similar work in that I still work for the College of Humanities as Associate Director for Internships and Career Success. That's my official new title for the College of Humanities, and that is because I now have two jobs. I have, that's my role within College of Humanities, I now also work with U Career Success as a Career Specialist. Estella Weeks: Well, congratulations. That's so exciting. Cameron Vakilian: Career development in general is growing at the University of Utah, we're trying to bring on more coaches. We're trying to really put intentionality around college to career, really connecting to more employment opportunities and relationships with employers. So, so that's why I you see that I have a new role in that way. I've always been doing so much within experiential learning, careers, internships, but now I'm a little bit more focused in which is great.Estella Weeks: That's so exciting. So today we're kind of talking all about internships, and this is a big part of your new role. And so would you mind explaining to us just what is an internship? Cameron Vakilian: The simplest way I can describe an internship is an experience that you take on to help you gain more skills into a field you want to go into, or just you want to learn more about some form of work. So I describe an internship as a way that you can immerse yourself in an experience, whether that's good or bad, you're learning more about yourself and you're gaining professional skills. So with that, I will say what an internship is not an internship is not a job that has no defined end date, right? Because a job is where you should already be having those skills. The employers hired you to be fully a part of their team, right? And then they're still training with jobs. And of course, there's onboarding and stuff. But an internship, the reason why we call it an internship is because you are gaining experiences, you're learning new things, and that you should have a supervisor or mentor that's guiding you through that process. Usually, you're a student, but you don't always have to be a student to do an internship, but it's that exploratory experience, whether that's good or bad. We hope it's always good and it turns into something where you're like, yeah, I want to learn more about this, or I'm now going to transition this into full time work. But yeah, in general, an internship should always be an experience catered to your career goals and skill development. Estella Weeks: Got it, and I know for my major specifically, there is an internship requirement. Do you know if that there's an internship requirement school wide? Cameron Vakilian: There is not. That's a good question you bring that up because I think more conversations are going on about that. About should an internship be required because they are so valuable for actually gaining employment out there. But it is not required in a lot of...

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