by Chloe Cha ‘28

As reported by a Warrior article written in 2023, the total number of seniors at Sherwood with internships, including those in school-based programs, was 22 percent of the Senior Class that year. Three years later, that percentage has approximately doubled and there are now about 130 seniors with internships, according to Internship Coordinator Maisie Lynch.

Seniors who leave school early with an abbreviated schedule to go to a job site are in the internship program, whether the position is paid or unpaid and regardless of whether it is a career-focused internship or a paid job that provides work experience. Seniors with internships need to work at least one hour for every hour that they miss school, but those work times do not have to be during the school day. Students in the program also get evaluated by a supervisor every quarter and Lynch visits them at their work site once a semester. 

“The perception of internships is that these kids are not doing anything or that it’s kind of this unsupervised thing,” said Lynch. “And I think what’s really important to understand is that this is becoming very heavily regulated with oversight.”    

Some seniors, such as Kayla Ho, Annah Nzomo, Isira Polmottawegerada, and Rejan Rada, intern for a Sherwood teacher. Polmottawegerada interns in class for Digital Electronics for David Hill, one of the Project Lead The Way teachers. “I chose to have the internship here because he’s been teaching me since I was a sophomore, and I wanted to learn from him and the way he teaches,” said Isira. “I do want to be an engineer, but I want to get some engineering aspects off of him and see how I can learn from that.” 

More commonly, students intern outside of school, sometimes relating to a career they are considering for their future. Senior Sydney Frace interns at Dr. Goral’s office in Leisure World and is in charge of taking patients back to rooms, checking their vitals, printing out papers, and preparing the room to be ready for when the doctor sees a patient. Frace plans on being a Physician Assistant (PA). 

Senior Liz Ramirez works as a research intern at American University for a project called the Immigration Lab where she helps with transcription and translation studies. “I’ve heard of a lot of different perspectives of different immigrant cases right now. There’s a lot of work into the preparation … from professors. There’s a really, really big team handling even the smallest piece of writing,” explained Ramirez, who is considering going into international relations and wants to help immigrant communities, as “there is a lot of work to be done.”

Many seniors work a job for other reasons such as work experience, earning money, or because it would be beneficial for college applications. Senior Braelyn Wood works as a hostess for Salt and Vine. “I didn’t want to be doing six filler classes plus one [for a graduation requirement,]” she said. “But also I wanted to save up money for college and stuff. So without the half day, I would have limited hours.” 

However, you can still get working experience even if you don’t have certain graduation requirements met yet by doing a completer. Senior Elena Katz works at a horseback riding farm where she can obtain a language credit through College and Career Readiness. This is a two year class where the second year requires the student to have an internship to get the credit that can satisfy a graduation requirement in another area.

In addition to students with internships, other seniors have abbreviated schedules to take dual-enrollment classes at Montgomery College (MC). Senior Alanna Glasser is taking Intro to Business and Intermediate Spanish 201 at MC, in part to explore business as a major, specifically international business/relations. 

Senior Jovan Rodrick recommends the MC route. He believes it is more convenient, easier to manage, and frees up his schedule more than having a full school day. “I think MC is a good idea if you want to be able to have more time at home, but I think it’s a good idea to stay at Sherwood if you want to have fun,” said Rodrick.