College of the Desert has multitudes of internship programs where students can get hands-on experiences from one of their major’s many workplaces to better understand what it’s like to work in that field. While you’re a part of the course, you must complete a few things to pass. First, you have an initial meeting with your professor and the internship supervisor to discuss three goals you aim to achieve in the class. Then the two other people have to check on that progress over time.

Around the end of September, I was offered to be part of this program and work as a paid intern at one of our local news stations, KESQ, News Channel 3. At first, I was nervous because of the interview at the news station that needed to take place to even be considered a candidate for this program. Luckily, my interview went well, and they accepted me.

My first day was highly nerve-wracking since I was pretty new to a newsroom setting and didn’t know much about being in one. I shadowed a couple of the producers and witnessed some of the work they do regularly.

Days passed when one of the producers asked me to write a script for a newscast to see how news-friendly my writing was. The first script was heavily edited because writing a script for a newscast was utterly different from what I’m used to. Eventually, however, my writing improved with time and needed little to no edits.

During my time there, some producers would assign me a massive task to complete so they had more time to do their scripts.

One of those tasks took place during the midterm elections; it was vital during the election coverage. I was asked to acquire everyone’s single candidate’s headshot for the online website and the air. It was lengthy and time-consuming since many candidates were busy and unable to send one as fast as I would have liked. The newsroom is filled with deadlines. I eventually got all of them before my deadline.

Another challenging task happened recently around Thanksgiving. The assignment was to watch an interview, write a script and choose audio clips (or soundbites) from the interviews for a story they would air about the Morongo Band of Indians gifting turkeys to local charities around the Coachella Valley and neighboring areas. It was a different experience compared to the other scripts I wrote since this had to include a video in the script. I eventually came up with a script, and with a few tweaks to my original script, it aired that day.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and felt like a ‘part of the team.’ If you are interested in joining this program or any College of the Desert Foundation internship program, I highly recommend looking for connections in your major. For journalism and mass media students, write for The Chaparral campus newspaper or even get involved in the college radio station COD Roadrunner Radio. Also, consider joining a KESQ paid internship because you will learn a lot from this program that I would have never learned in a classroom.