As students inch closer and closer to their future careers, many have taken it upon themselves to participate in summer internships. Senior Bradley Bennett participated in the Eve and Gene Black Summer Medical Career Program, an online surgical internship held by The Los Angeles Pediatric Society.

Even though this program took place online due to present COVID-19 restrictions, Bennett was still able to observe each surgery up close and learn from top notch surgeons, mainly focusing on the pediatrics department.

“Since the internship is all online, you get to watch them do the surgery live. The coolest thing is being able to see the doctor do each surgical procedure,” he said.

Though the majority of his internship was spent observing virtually, watching other doctors perform surgeries, in just a few weeks Bennett will get to see the procedures in person, as he will be shadowing a surgeon throughout a surgery.

“You finally get to go through the operating room with them and watch the surgeon do their procedures right next to you. It’s pretty cool,” he said.

This is just the beginning of Bennett’s surgical career, as he plans to study medical sciences in the future.

“I know I want to go into some kind of STEM field, whether that be biotechnology or medicine,” Bennett said. “This internship definitely gave me a better perspective on the field of medicine.”

Many students are using internships as a way to further their careers before they even begin, such as junior Zoe Inzer, who participated in a Red Cross Internship at the Los Angeles Chapter.

“I’ve been a member of the humanitarian mission for a very long time now, so I wanted to contribute this summer by helping the communications department,” she said.

Inzer was able to contribute in multiple ways, as she did their marketing work, ran their social media, and controlled press releases, using this summer as an opportunity to advance her knowledge of communications and marketing.

“A lot of the work that I dealt with was in the wake of disasters, such as wildfires and home fires. We needed to respond really quickly, so something I learned to do well is how to evoke a message. You need to get the right information to the right people at the right time in the right way,” she said.

Inzer plans on taking up her skill of communications professionally, as she aims for the business world. 

“I was thinking about marketing when I applied for this internship because nowadays, one of the biggest markets is marketing or occupations. I really wanted to embrace that so I could do this internship, have better experience, and support a mission,” she said.

Inzer had some important takeaways from this internship: she learned that despite her introverted tendencies, she was able to embrace communications with open arms and learn how to engage herself in social situations.

“You learn to communicate by putting yourself out there,” Inzer said. “Communication can be as little as one click and as big as saving a life.” 

Senior David Oplatka dipped his toes in the vast waters of his potential future occupation. 

Studying to be a math major in college, Oplatka took an engineering internship at Boeing, a major aerospace and engineering company, to calculate how his eventual major may play a role in his future job.

Although his internship was held virtually due to covid restrictions, he still had a meaningful experience. Through Boeing, Oplatka learned the ins and outs of an engineering firm, learning how to make a “Gantt chart, which creates a timeline for the entire project” and make “CAD model[s] which [he] used [his] experience from robotics to show manufacturing cost analysis.” 

Oplatka was also able to establish connections despite the internship being held online, and with the aid of his guides, he became better equipped to conquer this new engineering environment.

 “I was able to network with Boeing employees that are also applied mathematicians and data scientists,” Oplatka said. “I got to grab lunch with one of my mentors and we got to talking to each other, and I bonded with people that I’ve never met before.”