Ever wonder how Amherst students land such incredible internships? The Internship Diaries spotlights a recipient of the Charles Hamilton Houston Award from each of the career communities. In this edition, we follow Rizwan Ayub ’27 through his summer working with Breakthrough New York at the intersection of education and social impact. Here’s how he got there, what he learned from it, and what advice he has for others on the same path.
Each summer, the Charles Hamilton Houston Internship Program sponsors select students with lowpaying/nonpaying internships. We had the opportunity to hear from Rizwan Ayub, a Charles Hamilton Houston recipient who interned at Breakthrough New York, an organization that supports ambitious, academically motivated, low-income students to succeed in high school, in college, and beyond. Rizwan is a history major.
Quotes are edited for clarity.
So tell us, what led you to pursue this internship?
What drew me to my Teaching Fellowship at Breakthrough New York was, in part, my experience from my freshman year summer, when I interned at the Queens County Civil Court. It was a great learning experience, but I realized that I wanted to try something different with more interpersonal interaction and spontaneity than legal work, which involves a lot of desk work (and zoning out), which drew me to want to try out teaching!
Can you walk us through the process of your internship search?
I found out about this internship through a Google search, something along the lines of “Summer Teaching Internship NYC.” I had zero prior connections to Breakthrough, and just filled out the online application and then interviewed with them.
However, the Loeb Center, and Robert Siudzinski were tremendously helpful in preparing me for the Interview – I did a Mock Interview with Robert Siudzinski, the Education Careers Advisor, which helped boost my confidence for the interview!
My interview also coincided with the tail-end of the Sophomore Summit, and the practice and information we had learned about interviewing were tremendously helpful for me to prepare. I think my interview went well because I was able to draw upon the stories I had from my time at Amherst thus far, even though at the time, I hadn’t had any experience teaching.
What skills and career insights did you take from this experience?
My primary goal in doing this teaching Fellowship was to learn more about teaching and education policy in New York City and whether I would want to pursue teaching as my career. Being able to teach literature to students was an invaluable experience, as it helped me realize that my passions align more with being able to teach and think about the subjects that I am interested in than working with kids itself.
Final advice for other students trying to land a similar internship?
Firstly, don’t be afraid to apply for opportunities, even if you don’t have any connections to the organization in question, because rejection is part of the game; Internship acceptances are fairly random, as I’ve realized. For example, I got rejected from places where I had Amherst connections with, was rejected from an organization and then subsequently un-rejected (and then re-rejected), and ultimately got accepted by this organization I found out about through a Google Search.
Secondly, for anyone considering a career in education or social work, there are so many good opportunities in and around Amherst such as the class Reading/Writing/Teaching where students tutor adults off-campus (a class I took Spring ’25), A Better Chance Tutoring, the Common School down South Pleasant Street, TAing for classes, etc.
However, a more important aspect would be to take opportunities that get you out of the Amherst bubble and interact with local communities, even if they aren’t related to education. Aside from these opportunities being tremendously personally rewarding in helping you gain perspective, they can also help you stand out when applying for education-related opportunities. For instance, part of what I believe helped me stand out when I interviewed with Breakthrough was that I discussed my experience in Justice – the “Inside-Out Class” which Amherst and incarcerated students took together at the local prison – in the Fall ’24 Semester.
