By Laila Meleigy, Daily Forty-Niner
May 15, 1997
The office of Cooperative Education and the Career Development Center hosted the 15th annual awards reception for the winners of the Internship Essay Competition, Wednesday at the Chartroom.
The overall winner was Debra Wall, a sociology senior who is graduating this May.
Her internship was with the City of Gardena's Employment and Training Center. She worked with youth who were interested in obtaining summer jobs.
Wall's essay was about the hardships that minorities go through in finding a job.
Wall explained that she would talk to employers who would inform her that there were job openings, but once she sent an African-American male, the employers would change their tune and say the opening had been filled.
"It was hard for these youth to find a job due to their color or the neighborhood they came from," Wall said.
She also explained that before her internship, she had hardly ever come across African-American males and had only seen them depicted by the media as "mean gangbangers."
Once she got to know them, she became close with most of the men she worked with and grew very fond of them, she said.
"I will never forget the people I worked with," Wall said.
She said she learned about their eagerness and willingness to work.
She taught the young men how to dress appropriately for a job interview, how to conduct themselves and how to go about looking for a job.
The office of cooperative education holds an essay competition every year for students from all of the Cal State Long Beach colleges.
Students are required to write an essay recounting their experience as interns, said Betty Schmicker-Black, the coordinator of the competition.
A winner is selected from each college by the dean. A committee is then selected to judge the overall winner who is presented with $400.