Internship portfolio for JYG 5890
The Junior Year in Munich Program does not award credit for the internship experience, but rather for written work completed in conjunction with the internship. To receive a grade for JYG 5890 Overseas Internship, students must produce an internship portfolio.
The internship portfolio provides you the opportunity to document your internship experience and to reflect upon what you learned.
Portfolio elements
An ideal internship portfolio would be 8 to 10 pages in length (in German of course) and contain the following elements.
Introduction
Your introduction should:
- Introduce yourself, your studies, career goals and why you wanted an internship
- Describe the steps you took to find and obtain the internship
- Describes your initial thoughts regarding what you hoped to learn from this internship
Overview
Your overview of the host company/organization should include:
General information about the company/organization (ex. Unternehmensprofil).
You can find this information in printed materials or online; feel free to use it (ex. by inserting logos, graphs, pictures, etc.), but don't just cut and paste it into your portfolio. Reference sources and use quotation marks when the words are not your own.
More specific information about where you interned within the company or organization.
You might wish to add or create an organizational chart and then describe the areas of responsibility associated with various units pertinent to your internship.
Detailed account
Provide a detailed account of what your internship entailed, including:
- Your duties and/or responsibilities
- Any particular skills you used accomplish your duties and/or responsibilities
- A description of a typical day
- A description of a particularly challenging or wonderful day
Concluding narrative
Include a concluding narrative in which you reflect upon:
- How the internship experience was similar to or different from your initial thoughts about what you hoped to learn from this experience (see introduction section)
- Skills and/or competencies you acquired or strengthened through the internship experience
- Personal knowledge and insight you gained regarding similarities and differences between U.S. and German work environments
- The value of the internship experience as you see it in terms of your career goals
Pro-tip: Construct your internship portfolio as if you were preparing a presentation to an audience of people who know nothing of you, Junior Year in Munich or Germany. Make it informative and attractive so that it impresses your professors back in the U.S.