Name: Kathryn

Year: Junior

Major(s): Political Science

Minor(s): French Language

CFS Program: Field Studies in Humanities

The first thing that comes to mind for Chicago Field Studies is, of course, the internship. Without diminishing the magnitude of the experience I had at the Attorney General’s Office, the CFS Humanities class was an absolutely integral component of my CFS experience. Thinking about work in your time away from work may sound off-putting, but the reality is I would not have extracted nearly as much valuable insight pertaining to both my internship at the OAG and for my career path going forward had I not partaken in the CFS class.

Particularly in the CFS Humanities class, there was a vast array of different internship experiences in different sectors that I was able to live out indirectly through students’ recounted stories. An internship can become a very self-contained and self-sustaining bubble throughout the quarter, and the CFS class can help remind you of the bigger picture. This is invaluable for those that are loving their internship like myself, as much as for those that were not having the experience that they had imagined.

That said, it would be a disservice for me not to speak to the merits of the internship program at the OAG itself. Even if you think you want a directly legal internship, give this one a try. By interning in Community Outreach, you work directly at the intersection of legislation and the public – in other words, you get to see how legislative efforts impact the community on a daily basis, and it is often your task to develop material that will expand the community’s awareness that certain legislation and legal protections actually exist. Without the vital work of the Community Outreach team, all of the legal good that is done would not reach the various target audiences throughout Illinois in the meaningful way it does today.