Written for The Argo by Anthony Beska.

The advice your parent’s give of “college is what you make it” is tried and true across campuses and generations. While you could lock yourself away in your dorm room and plug away at your assignments and projects, striving for a perfect GPA, chances are your college experience would feel lacking. College is ultimately about experiences—and what better way to gain them than by joining clubs and internships?

Stockton offers a litany of varying internships to give students a glimpse into the real world of the field of their choice while also helping them develop the technical skills to hit the ground running and thrive in their field of work. One of the most varied and engaging internships a Stockton student can partake in is the South Jersey Culture & History Center local press; which since their first publication over a decade ago, has published over 36 various titles focused on the culture and history of South Jersey alongside their annual journal, SoJourn. 

Professor Kinsella explains that “The South Jersey Culture & History Center local press is, we believe, the only student-staffed press within New Jersey (and perhaps the Northeast).” This is beneficial to the students running it, Professor Kinsella is the safety net and fallback for the students to ensure they put out a quality text. 

If editing and publication still sounds neither useful nor helpful to you or your major, look a little further at the critical skills Professor Kinsella promises to help you hone. “Students get a view into the varied processes that go into publishing: editing, design, layout…Students may not master every skill, but they will walk away with a better understanding of the teamwork, artistry, and attention to detail need by anyone working in the publishing field.”

In an increasingly digital world, regardless of if you’re an accounting or history or medical major, the most important thing for all graduates pouring out to the job market is making yourself and your brand stick out; in other words, editing yourself down to the nitty-gritty, most important aspects and making it appealing and easy to digest for future employers. This is similar to how a magazine or an article in SoJourn or the South Jersey Culture & History Center local press has to stand out and be eye catching. 

There’s no such thing as bad experience, because it’s still experience that you can reflect on and use to shape yourself. College, as another professor put it, is your last chance of a safety net before being flung out into the professional world. It is a place where you still have the option to fail and be shown how to improve instead of just being fired. So that is why internships are so important. Even if you don’t learn what you think you want to learn, you’ll be leaving the experience with something.