VietNamNet Bridge – June is always the hardest time for senior university students. That’s when they must suffer the hardships of a strenuous internship period, while not expecting to gain too much from it.

Internship is a must for senior students, as it helps them accumulate experiences useful for their future jobs. However, many seniors say that their internship days were disillusioning.

A university lecturer said that, in principle, training establishments take the responsibility of arranging internship plans for their students. However, the fact is that the schools cannot place all their students in internships.

Most students have to look for agencies or businesses for internship themselves.

“A lot of the businesses I contacted refused me, even though I showed them a letter of introduction from my lecturer, a renowned lecturer,” said Thu Anh, a student of a finance school.

“As for businesses, finance reports and balance sheets are top confidential documents. Therefore, no one wants us to access such documents,” she explained.

Nguyen Ngoc Phuong, a student of the Southern Economics and Technique Junior College, complained that all the state-owned enterprises she applied to refused trainees because of information security issues.

“Only a small privately run business accepted me. But it only provided information in dribs and drabs, which made my internship period so boring,” Phuong said.

“I got no experience from the internship period except for acquiring some communication skills,” she added. “The workers there often asked me to do some errands – boil water, infuse tea and clean the floor”.

However, though Phuong “only did some errands”, she still received compliments from the director of the business.

“At the end of the internship time, the company’s chief accountant gave me some tax declaration reports of the business in 2007 and 2008. I made a report based on the figures, then submitted them to the director, who then offered some comments on my work at the company,” she said.

“For the report, I got 9 marks for the internship,” she concluded.

Nguyen Hai Binh, a future journalist, who finished his internship period with an excellent rating, admitted that in fact, he could not fulfill his duties.

During a three-month internship at a newspaper, the number of articles Binh managed to get published only came to half the number he was required to have.

“The problem was that the newspaper’s editorial board prioritized to publish the articles written by their reporters,” he said.

Consequently, Binh had to persuade the paper’s reporters to publish some of their articles under his name. With their support, Binh fulfilled his duties with an excellent assessment, but he himself admitted that he did not gain much useful experience for his future job.

“I am not happy with the excellent marks on… paper. I just feel sad because I did not have the opportunities to show my capability,” he said. “The internship period, therefore, does not have much significance”.

Le Lam, MA, Headmaster of Dai Viet Sai Gon Junior College, noted that there has been no close cooperation between training establishments and employers. As a result, trainers don’t understand what businesses want from school graduates, while businesses cannot find suitable candidates from training establishments.

GD & TD