From September until October 2018, I did an internship at the foreign affairs editorial board at Elsevier Magazine. The foreign affairs editorial board has a separate section called the “American Dreamers”, devoted to the history, culture, politics and other aspects of the United States. It is the perfect place for a North American Studies student who is interested in (a career) in journalism.

The internship consisted of a regular 40-hour work week at the magazine’s office in Amsterdam. A typical week starts with the weekly Monday morning meetings, during which all the editors get together and discuss the latest news and world events for potential topics for the issue of the following week. As an intern, you are free to join and participate in these meetings. Because Tuesday is the deadline for the magazine to go into print, it is in a way the end of the work week. Editors and interns gather for drinks after 5:00 PM on Tuesdays and each week the interns come up with a statement regarding journalism and ethics, which will then be discussed by all present. During the rest of the week, you work on your articles for the “American Dreamers” section. Interns are given a lot of freedom to choose their own topics.

I found that writing journalistic articles is very different from writing academic papers at a university. The objective and audience of a news magazine article is simply different than those of a course paper. You will have to take into account the audience’s knowledge of the subject and the attention span of the average reader. The article will have to be thought-provoking and worthwhile to read. This way of writing takes some getting used to, but that is at least one purpose of an internship: to find out whether a certain career is suitable for you. What is most useful for this internship is that the master programme in North American Studies offers students  extensive knowledge of the United States. The freedom to choose the topics for your articles also means a responsibility to find interesting ones, without a lot of help or guidance. My articles ranged from a series on American literature, interviews and a travel log to opinion pieces and news articles. The office environment is very easygoing and informal and the amount of freedom and independence make this a very interesting internship.

"In the fall semester of 2017, I did an internship at the Dutch broadcasting company NOS in Washington. I first heard of the internship through an email sent by the department chair, Dr. Joke Kardux, to all North American Studies students informing them of this opportunity. I applied for the internship thinking that my lack of journalistic experience would mean that I would not be a fit for the program. In total, there were four rounds of selection. The first one was a letter of motivation, then followed a Skype-interview, a writing assignment, and, finally, there was a final call over the phone. The whole process took about a month and after all this, I found out that I was selected as the next intern."

Internship in Washington

"During my internship I used the skills and knowledge I’ve gained during my MA in North American Studies on a daily basis. The knowledge about American history, politics, and culture is particularly of value. The value of knowing how America became the nation it is today and what the American people find important speaks for itself. Another skill I used is writing. Even though I was not writing scholarly papers, I still used the same techniques when writing articles. The structure of a written piece is very important and my MA trained me in this aspect of writing a narrative."

Pitching and writing

"As an intern in Washington, my day started at 9 am and usually finished between 5 and 6 pm. I started most of my days by reading the newspapers to look for interesting stories to write about. After this, I pitched a story to my colleagues and started writing it. The days when big events such as Hurricane Harvey happened, the focus was on those stories. In these cases, I was usually tasked with finding people to talk to about this subject and plan the trips to these locations."

"The main part of my internship was the writing of articles for the website. During my internship at the NOS, I wrote a total of eight articles that were published on their website. I could write about anything that I thought was interesting. As a result, I've written articles that cover a wide range of topics. For example, I've written about the relationship between presidents and athletes and about the DACA-children (young undocumented immigrant children—the so-called “Dreamers”), but also an article on the New York Yankees. I enjoyed the research that goes into these stories and writing about something that is sometimes overlooked."

Job after graduation summer 2018

After my internship, I finished my thesis and started looking for a job. Through LinkedIn I asked some people for advice and managed to find my current job, at the Fulbright Center, two months after graduating in June 2018. I am now one of the program-assistants at the Fulbright Center in Amsterdam, which means that I assist the program coordinators in managing several of the programs offered by the Fulbright Center. Additionally, I am also managing the social media outreach of the Fulbright Center and the website.