Last fall, I completed an internship at a local mid-sized agency in my area and fell even more in love with public relations. It was my first internship, so I was understanding (although still a little bitter) about the fact that it was unpaid. Students in my area usually take on an unpaid internship to gain experience and fill in their resume first before landing a paid one. After the semester ended, I was naively confident that I would be able to land a paid internship or co-op, because, “duh! I have experience now! Everyone will want me!”

This was not the case.

Not only did I not get any offers, but I ended up being overwhelmed with classwork and my responsibilities as President of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA for short). It was a learning experience for me to accept that no one wanted to hire me. I also had to constantly reassure myself that I still had time- I had all summer and the following fall semester to get another internship before graduating.

Mid-spring, I started applying to any internships I could find. I was at a point in my life where I couldn’t afford to take on another unpaid internship, so in order to get some sort of compensation, I had to explore other fields. After a few months, a couple anxiety attacks about my future, two interviews, and a new e-board to train, I finally got an offer! It was totally unexpected, honestly.

The only downside was that it was completely unrelated to public relations. The internship was for one of the largest third party logistics companies in the world that handles shipping for companies like Dollar Tree, Walmart, Stihl, Target, Amazon, and many, many more. The offer was too good for me to refuse, and hey- I didn’t have anything else going on this summer, so I accepted it.

It wasn’t very clear what my responsibilities were when I applied, so I was excited to learn more about a different communication field.

Within two weeks, I knew the job wasn’t for me.

My first week was dedicated to learning about the company and getting comfortable with the main software that is used. After that, I spent all my time creating shipments that were called “can-gets” which are basically potential shipments. I would build the shipment in the software, wait for offers from carriers (trucking companies), bring that rate (with added margin) to the customer, and negotiate back and forth until we all landed on an amount where everybody wins. That didn’t happen a lot.

So here I am now, two months later, and I know way more about trucks and flatbeds than I ever thought I would.

Even though I didn’t love what I was doing, I still gave it 110%.

It would not have been fair to the company, my manager, or our customers for me to come in and half-ass everything. Eventually I moved on from can-gets and started working on more projects where I was doing cost analyses to secure new business.

I’ve made friends in the office, had some good laughs, and even became an “expert” in a new software that is being implemented in all of the offices soon. I gained respect and built a reputation for myself.

As my time here is coming to a close, there have been a lot of questions about whether I would come back or not. I had to be honest with myself (and my manager): I technically could continue, but it wasn’t the right fit. I don’t feel like I’m reaching my best potential here and at the end of the day, that isn’t fair to myself. I can already tell it’s going to be harder than expected to say goodbye to everyone here, but I’m sure they would welcome me with open arms if I ever changed my mind and decided to come back.

Final point: even though I didn’t fall in love with transportation and logistics, I still don’t regret my time here. I learned a lot, got to experience a new field, and made an impact. So moral of the story is that even though an internship doesn’t sound like something you might like, try it! You might end up loving it or you might learn a whole new skill(s) that will be useful later down the road.