By Isha Trivedi '19

For most people, summer vacation is a great opportunity to explore the world of jobs, internships, selective sumer camps, travel and so much more. For me, the summer between sophomore and junior year served as a time to recharge my batteries, prepare for the whirlwind that is junior year and, of course, experience new things. As an active writer for the ND newspaper, the Crown and Shield, I found myself diving into the world of news media, journalism and politics. When searching for a job, internship, or volunteer opportunities at the most common media companies and newspapers (NPR, The Mercury News) proved fruitless, a family friend recommended that I turn to India Currents.

Despite the fact that my family had been subscribed to it for many years, I never considered how much I could learn by working at this magazine. For those who have not heard of it, India Currents is an Indian-American publication dedicated to “the exploration of the heritage and culture of India as it exists in the United States of America.” As a second generation immigrant myself, I realized after seeing some of the articles from the magazine that working there would be perfect for me. 

My first day at the office was a very exciting experience––I was able to meet with Nirupama Vaidhyanathan, the managing editor, and got myself oriented with the work I would be doing. After adding new videos to the website and editing a few articles, my name could be found as a contributor to the website from day one. Since then, my work stayed mostly online: I focused my energy on improving the readability of certain aspects of the website in order to make its articles more findable to search engines, as well as to ensure a smooth transition to a different website layout in the future. I was also encouraged to discover topics I was passionate about and find ways to incorporate those with the various themes of the magazine. Since then, I have written a few articles and have proposed multiple articles to be published later.

Working at this publication taught me a great deal about journalism, design, marketing and writing. My knowledge of these topics has grown since then, and because of this internship, continues to grow today. Since school has started, I have stopped working with the India Currents full time, but I do continue to write articles and send suggestions when I can. Overall, this experience taught me much more than I ever thought it would, and I highly recommend it to others interested in a similar field of study.