Navigating a career as a young adult can be difficult, especially when it seems like everyone has everything figured out. That is why one of our alum, Dalvin Sejour took initiative and wrote a book titled, “The Guidebook To Securing Internships” to help students. Dalvin was a part of our cohort during the Spring of 2017, where he did an internship abroad in the land down under, Australia. He attended the University of Sydney completing Gen Ed courses along with working with one of our partner companies “Bonjoro” as a Full Stack Developer. He even created an app that functions as a travel journal available for downloading, iTravel Journal.

Along with doing completing the experience with our program, he also had amassed a wealth of experience from other internship programs such as interning with Facebook, Stitch Fix, and CNBC, to name a few. When Dalvin had doubts about writing the book because it felt “generic”, he felt confident about putting out his story when he did his research on Amazon and saw no existing products. Therefore, he went down the self-published route and put the body of work together following tutorials, using platforms like KDP, Ingram Spark, and Barnes & Noble to put out the work. Matt Meltzer, the CEO and Founder of Sage Corps and the Co-Director of Experience Lab at UC Berkeley, chimed in on the importance of internships and has a snippet on the back cover.

If you are a student looking to gain knowledge on how to secure internships and figure out corporate America, this is definitely a title to put in your library.

We asked Dalvin about his experience since participating in Sage Corps and what advice he had for incoming cohort members, and college students in general:

Q: What was your inspiration to writing

I wrote, “The Guidebook To Securing Internships” because I felt as though there was not a comprehensive guide from the first person on how to secure internships. As Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”. Before writing the book, I was skeptical of writing the book, because I felt as though it was a topic that was already widely available and public knowledge. It was not until I did a bit of digging and research on Amazon that I saw that there was a void for that kind of knowledge.  Writing the book also gave me an outlet to reflect on my time in undergrad and tell my experiences of interning for top companies like Facebook, Google, Stitch Fix, along with reflect on my study abroad experience through the Sage Corps program. I came to the realization that a freshman, even a high schooler, with this abundance of information would be in a distinguished position.

Q: What have you learned since your time in Sage Corps?

Working with a startup through Sage Corps was my first taste of seeing an entrepreneur at work, alive in the flesh. I learned a ton from Matt Barnett and the Bonjoro team, about taking a calculated risk and not being afraid to action to words. Even though a book is not a “startup”, I have to treat the book as a business because I am doing my own marketing, relationship building, and sales. Those skills are transferable and I was able to learn that through my time abroad in the land down under in Australia. Now that I have a product to call my own, it feels good to be able to reflect on that body of work, tweak it, and adjust it to my heart’s content.

Q: What’s some Sage Advice you have to offer?

For my sage advice, I would say, that take small steps to put a plan to action. Because you don’t achieve greatness in big leaps, but it is achieved through diligent, repeated activity.

Click below to learn more about Dalvin’s Journey after Sage Corps. His book, The Guidebook to Securing High Profile Internships is available in hardcover and digital format.