Malak Abdul Ghaffar

My name is Malak Abdel Ghaffar and I’m from Cairo, Egypt. I am a junior majoring in Literature and Creative Writing and minoring in Social Research and Public Policy. This summer, I had the opportunity to intern with a small publishing house in Brooklyn, New York called Restless Books. I learned about this internship by looking at the CDC internship map. I noticed that two students worked there previously and reached out to them. After hearing out their feedback, I was excited to apply to Restless Books and began my application process from there!

During my time at the internship, I was responsible for reading manuscript submissions from various authors, managing different social media platforms, coming up with book rebranding campaigns, and organizing data files. One of the highlights of my internship was getting to work with a small team of 10. I got to know each colleague very well and that significantly strengthened our teamwork on projects.

Because this internship was my first off-campus professional working experience, a lot of the tasks seemed overwhelming and challenging. But as the days went by, I started to get a hang of my daily tasks and was excited whenever a new task was assigned to me. One of my motivations for securing this internship was to understand what working in the publishing industry is like.

As much as I learn in classes at university, there is nothing more hands-on and experiential than working with professionals in the field. I was able to apply the skills I learned in my classes, work with other interns on projects, and report to my supervisors for daily tasks and assignments. The biggest lesson I have come out of this internship is to never fear to go into new fields just for the sake of exploring and learning more about them! I am now more motivated than ever to push myself out of my comfort zone and try out different fields of interests until I find the one I am excited to pursue full time after graduation.

Any advice?

My advice to anyone pursuing similar opportunities is to reach out to as many people as you can during your application process; talking to students and professionals with experience was one the highlights of my internship search. And please don’t give up while applying; I applied to over 35 companies until I found the right one for me and my interests!