Am I hurting myself by taking a technical writing internship instead of a UX internship?

Hey! My name is Darin and I’m a 26 year old college student currently applying for summer 2021 internships.

My goal after graduation is to get a junior-level UI/UX position at an awesome company and grow from there.

Right now I don’t have much in the way of a portfolio, other than a mockup of a mobile app I designed in Figma. So my main motivation to do a UI/UX internship is to get my hands dirty, learn as much as I can, contribute to real projects, and come away with something cool to show off in my portfolio.

I’ve applied to about 15 different UX/UI internships for summer 2021 and haven’t heard back from any of them yet, but I’m fairly confident I will be able to secure an internship at a good company.

This morning, I received a message from a recruiter at a large (10,000+ employee) tech company asking me to apply for their Technical Writing internship for summer 2021.

I love technical writing and already have some experience in that field, so I am tempted to apply for this position immediately. However, I’m worried that by accepting this position, I’ll be missing out on the critically valuable experience of an actual UI/UX design internship.

Am I hurting myself by taking a technical writing internship instead of a UI/UX internship? I understand that technical writing is a useful skill to put on a UI/UX resume. I’m just wondering how much better off I’d be if, at graduation, I had actual UI/UX design work experience on my resume, compared to the technical writing.

Thanks a lot!

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If you’re stuck on a UX job, you want to get a UX internship. Getting actual work on portfolio and resume will trump anything you’ll get from education.

You may consider looking into UX Writing as a career path. It’s a more niche skill, but it’s a valuable one. If you have the skills for it, it may be something worth looking into.

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Thank you for the advice! UX writing does seem very interesting.

I decided to continue applying for UX design internships and recently accepted a UX design internship position for summer 2021 - words cannot describe my excitement!

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