To me, it evokes images of sorting mail, getting coffee, and handling otherwise menial tasks in the hopes of boosting one's resume.

I realize that this represents quite a generalization, which my own personal experience severely negates. As an undergrad, I had three internships. Two of them, both at daily newspapers, provided me with invaluable experience. I toiled daily in my own cubicle, interacting with sources and writing stories regularly. I left each with a portfolio of bylined clips and editorial references that undeniably assisted me in landing my first full-time job.

The third, consisted mostly of answering phones and playing on the Internet, but even that experience left me with a deeper understanding of the inner workings of a magazine.

After finishing school and spending five years as a full-time reporter (including a few mentoring interns), I thought that my days as an intern myself had passed.

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At first I completely ignored the emails, assuming career services has really meant to target the M.S. students (many of whom have little if any full-time experience and/or published clips).

After all, I figured, even if I were lucky enough to snag an internship that gave me real experience, an internship, by nature, represent the step before the entry-level job. Having already had and moved on from an entry-level position, I felt that taking an internship would obviously mean a step down the career ladder.

In addition most internships paid a stipend of a few hundred dollars per week or a small hourly rate (usually $10-$12), if they paid anything at all. I feared that even if I got an internship at a publication that then offered me a job, they would offer me an entry-level salary, negating my full-time experience and all of those hard-won promotions and raises of the past five years.

If I did not get offered a job at the end of the summer, I would find myself back in the job market in three short months. I assumed that all my experienced M.A. students would take a similar view, but I found myself mistaken. As the deadlines for the first few internships rolled past in September and October, I watched as my classmates scurried to get together applications and overnight them into human resource departments across the country. One classmate sent out a dozen applications.

I became nervous I'd been too hasty in my dismissal and may have missed an opportunity to break into a major national publication. I went back through the list of internships and took a closer look.

First, I sorted out all the unpaid internships. Sure, I gave up my steady income when I started school, but my loans will come due on graduation, and I need to have some entries on the credit side of my checkbook. I also sorted out all the internships at publications outside of New York. While many of these seemed like great opportunities, my husband and my two-year lease will keep me tied to this city after graduation.

I eliminated those internships with exceedingly complicated application processes. I had hit up several former bosses just a few months prior for reference letters in my graduate school application process, and I thought it best to save the next requests for when I found myself seeking a full-time position.

I decided to only apply to publications at which I would like to work full-time. This left three possibilities: The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and BusinessWeek. Each application required a cover letter, clip package, and resume.

The Journal has kindly informed me that, while I made it to the second round, other candidate were more qualified for the internship program. The Financial Times and BusinessWeek never confirmed that they received my resume and clips, but they have also not rejected me yet either. One of my classmates has lined up an internship at a magazine, but the rest remain in the balance.

As I wait, I remind myself that I entered the M.A. program in the hopes of moving my career forward. I am still unsure whether an internship will help the cause.

Beth Braverman is a freelance writer and graduate student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Astoria, N.Y.