In public relations, a key step on the career path is an internship. I know only a few people who skipped this stage in the process. Where I work, we hire one or two interns per semester. It’s not Dean Whitter, but it’s a fairly competitive internship.

My work pal Kristin is in charge of the selection process and mentoring of the interns. She does a great job, and it’s an important one. We’re selective about our interns because they are integrated immediately into our client teams and get to do real client work from day one. We do not have interns fetching coffee or making copies; it’s a real-time, real-life experience. Kristin knows this, having been an intern herself in the past, and takes care in the critical selection step. If timing is right, and the happy coincidence occurs for an intern that we’re looking to fill a junior level position at the end of their internship, they have an advantage in the hiring process. Kristin makes sure that interns added to our team bring personalities, attitudes, interest and skills that complement our teams and works with them through the semester to make sure they’re getting the most our of their experience. They’re as lucky to have her as we are to have them on the team.

Interns need to seek opportunites with the attributes that define a successful internship experience:

1. Actual Work. The opportunity to participate actively in client work is critical. This includes plenty of writing, brainstorm sessions, thought contribution and task management.
2. Networking. A good internship will provide the intern the opportunity to get to know clients, and for clients to know their work, so when they move on, there’s an expanded network to which they can look for career opportunities.
3. Money. The paid internship has thankfully become more common. We can’t expect excellent work if we’re not compensating for it in more than just experience. Interns are better if they’re eating regular meals.
4. Learning. Interns should be sponges and those mentoring them (which should be everyone with whom they come in contact) should be teaching them something. An intern should finish the semester having learned as much, if not more, from the internship than they did in  semester of school.
5. Reality check. For some, an internship is an eye-opener. They may have thought PR (or whatever the internship is in) was their chosen profession. Frank discussions about life in the industry should take place, providing the intern the opportunity to say, “Whoa. That’s not how I want to live my life.” Or, “Hey! This is great, and the job for me. Sign me up.”

Students or new graduates should be as choosy as firms in selecting an internship. Ask about the kind of work you’ll be asked to do, what opportunities you’ll have to build relationships with internal and external team members. While many may be interested, overwhelmingly so, and understandably, in permanent employment, let that not be your focus. If the fit is right on both sides of the arrangement, you’ll know by the end of the internship.

I have these real-life friends that I’ve gotten to know because I’m a blogger, and they are, too:

• Amy who, like me has done more than one blog project. She’s the reason I had the confidence to fire up a wiki for my firm.
• Sean, the podcast mastermind behind Voices of Poverty.
• Amanda, who was my first online editor, then a real-life friend, then a co-blogger and now someone I love dearly from miles away.
• Brian, Amanda’s dancin’ half, who is my one and only Netflix friend.
• Waldo, what, guys, the most prolific blogger on the east coast? Certainly in C’ville. Amazing.
• Jennifer, fellow working mom and fantastic friend.

Because I’m a blogger, I have these virtual friends that are no less important to me than the real-live in person ones:

• Dana, who all the C’ville Working Moms should read! I’ll translate any St. Louis specific terms that boggle your mind.
• Michelle, who used to work where I used to work, but we didn’t work there simultaneously — got that? She’s a marketing genius and a noteworthy industry blogger.
• Robin, one I’ve turned to in times of distress because I knew she’d understand — and she did! A warm, wonderful, generous soul.
• Dwight, mentor to writers and wannabes in STL and beyond.

And, because I’m a blogger, I have web cred among my peers, and that pretty much rocks.

Long (suffering) readers of this blog know I like to educate my children on the most morbid topics I can summon. It delights me to be the one person who has commited to their pop culture education of death and tragedy. So, thrilled was I to read this account of what happened at Chappaquiddick. Since the incident occurred several months before my birth, my piecing together of the details has been fuzzy. My parents were the primary source for this story prior to this blog post, so now I’m jazzed that I can now tell the story to my kids in a more comprehensive way.

First, I’ll probably have to tell them who Ted Kennedy is, though. Sigh.

Everyone has a few — movies they’ll stop and watch when they catch them on TV; even if it’s a beautiful sunny day outside; even though they have TiVo; even though they may even own the movie on DVD.

Here are some of mine:

• Stripes
• Any of the Godfather movies
• The Blues Brothers
• Napoleon Dynamite
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

What are yours?

Movies that can’t be watched twice? Anything by M. Night Shyamalan.

I am a big fan of St. Louis nonprofit KidSmart, and first wrote about the organization in 2003. I am lucky enough to work for a company that supports the Push for Pencils effort. Standing Partnership is again partnering with KidSmart for this terrific campaign.

KidSmart is a store that provides school supplies including paper, pencils, crayons and other necessities to teachers in school districts where kids are largely underprivileged. If you’re a teacher you know it’s not uncommon to shell out your own dollars to help kids who don’t have the basics. KidSmart makes it easier for kids, teachers and schools to be successful.

It is a fact: there are more than 80,000 students in St. Louis who cannot afford basic school supplies. KidSmart is there to help and has provided more than $5 million in school supplies to kids since 2002.  

Here’s how you can help a child succeed in school this year: donate cash online, to help KidSmart stock and manage their operations or contribute to the Push for Pencils campaign by buying school supplies and dropping them at one of the many locations accepting them during the back-to-school season.

It’s such a simple thing, really — but you’d be making a huge difference in a child’s life.

Here’s what school kids need most:

• Pencils
• Crayons
• Markers
• Glue
• Fiskar scissors
• Supply boxes
• Spiral notebooks
• Loose leaf paper
• Backpacks
• 2-Pocket Folders
• Pens
• Erasers

Thanks in advance for your generosity. Tell them I sent you!

The girl has crossed the border and is now wearing adult sizes in clothes and shoes. Many of her clothes are quite similar to mine; same colors, different sizes.

The result? I almost killed myself trying to put on a pair of her underwear this morning.

I’ve noted a heightened attention to customer service and personal attention here in C’ville. My pharmacist pulls my order without asking my name, and thanks me by name when she says goodbye. The gals that operate the UPS store where I check my mail know my name. The Baggby’s guy recognizes me when I’m in the paper and mentions it. The coffeehouse I frequent knows my order. It’s weird. In a good way, of course. I lived with such anonymity in St. Louis, never, ever bumping into neighbors at the store or being greeted by name in places I visited, that it’s still kind of a kick for me, enjoying a Mayberry kind of town.

Are you having good customer service experiences? Where?

B-A-N-A-N-A-S! Bananas!

We go through more of those darn things than anyone I know. I had to pick up another bunch at the store tonight. The girl eats at least one a day. Meh. She’s growing. Into a monkey.

What tops your grocery list?

Having floated the Current River for more than 10 years, I can write with some authority on riverin’. In fact, my husband and I have floated, meaning canoed, rafted or kayaked on rivers in several states including Michigan, Tennesee, Colorado, Hawaii, Missouri and now, Virginia. Being near to a river was an item on the vast checklist of criteria of places to live, and central Virginia suits that nicely.

Now, typically, and on most of our river experiences, there have been an abundance of hoosiers, and by that I don’t mean the good people of Indiana. In fact, as I previously alluded, we’ve never gone riverin’ in Indiana. What I mean is rednecks on the river, clogging the waterways drinking Natty Light, wearing little more than a sunburn and perhaps a sombrero, and polluting all that surrounds them.

The husband and I recently acquired a tandem kayak from the great Appomatox River Company. It is our retirement plan. Now that we’ve come into the phase of our lives when the children need us for little more than cash handouts and an occasional meal, we’re finding more time with just the two of us; time we intend to spend in increasing amounts on the river.

Our first joint excursion was on the Rivanna. We set out on a beautiful morning for a short tour. As we settled in, finding our paddling stride (read: me going all princess in the front while the husband handled the steering), I breathed the river air, admired the trees and enjoyed the summer quiet.

We were gifted with the sight of eagles soaring overhead, a snake in the water carrying a fish in its mouth and dozens of geese swimming out ahead of us.

I was shocked at the lack of people on the river. On a day like that in Missouri the river would have had a traffic jam a mile long. We went for miles without seeing a soul, then just a few squatters near Woolen Mills. There was a family camping (or living?) in tents a few miles beyond that and a couple of guys fishing later on, but that was it. No hoosiers, I thought, how odd.

And then I realized the truth; the hoosiers were us.  

In Leslie Morgan Steiner’s blog On Balance for the Washington Post, she shares her experience of telling her boss she was pregnant — twice. I have a friend who is newly pregnant and who will be facing this conversation one day soon.

At this point in my life, I would dread having to tell my boss almost as I much as I would dread having to tell my husband, or oh! my 17-year-old son. Not because I think my boss would make it difficult; because I know rearranging would have to be done, and they’ve already accomodated me so much already, working at home and traveling back to St. Louis so often. (And NO, this is not about me as I am TOTALLY not pregnant.)\disclaimer.

While maternity leave and conditions for pregnant or working mothers have certainly improved over the years, there’s still that uncertainty moms face in sharing their news.

My first boss worked in the retail industry the first time she got pregnant. The company she worked for was so male-driven and cutthroat she hid her pregnancy well into the second trimester. I think it took some of the celebration out of being pregnant for her, and certainly added to the stress of her already overwhelming job.

What kind of experiences have you had revealing your need to be off for six weeks or longer and if you’re a first-timer, the fact that you will soon be a completely different person than the one they hired in the first place?