Student
Eva Tersteeg
Creighton’s connections to internships made the difference for this Bluejay.
To say Eva Tersteeg is thorough may be a bit of an understatement. The current junior from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, toured (not just applied to, but actually visited) 17 colleges and universities before opting to become a Bluejay.
And what made Creighton stand out among the competition? Internship opportunities.
“There is such a strong connection with the Omaha community, and I have never had an issue in finding an internship,” Tersteeg says.
To date, she has held three internships. She has worked as an accounting intern with Frankel Zacharia, LLC, and internal audit intern at Creighton. In January, she began employment with BerganKDV, a business solutions firm in Omaha, as a tax intern.
“I have now completed both an audit and a tax internship without having taken either an audit or a tax class,” Tersteeg says. “It will be very interesting to see what those classes will look like since I already have experiences in both fields. The differences between what I learn in class and what I do in the ‘real world’ intrigues me.”
Freshmen and sophomores often think internship are for upperclassmen given that students at the beginning of their college careers lack both work experiences and subject knowledge. But Tersteeg believes that employers looking for interns do not expect applicants to have a firm grasp of all that the job requires. Internships, after all, are supposed to be learning experiences.
Attending college in this community made it very easy to find internships.
— Eva Tersteeg, BSBA’24
“It’s important to be confident in your worth,” Tersteeg says. Though she acknowledges that networking can be awkward, painful even, she cannot stress enough the importance it plays in securing internship opportunities. “I have gone to every career fair since my freshman year, and it was actually from events like these that I got my very first internship,” she says. “It is NEVER too early to start looking.”
Tersteeg is on the pre-law track at the Heider College of Business. She intends to marry accounting with law to work in the field of forensic accounting, especially in relation to counterterrorism. Eventually, she hopes to establish her own law and accounting firm, specializing in working with veterans and military personnel. It’s been a dream since her middle school years.
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While her internships and coursework prepare her for this future, so too have Tersteeg’s campus extracurricular activities. She has gained leadership experience and soft skills, like public speaking, through membership in such organizations and programs as Heider Dean’s Fellows, Anna Tyler Waite Leadership Program and Dean’s Honor Roll for Social Responsibility, and her work as a new student orientation peer leader and Campus Ministry retreat leader. She says these varied activities have helped her grow more at ease and confident in connecting with others.
A meeting at a social event can lead to an internship; participation in a spiritual exercise can contribute to a future career path. “Creighton provides wonderful opportunities for you, not only academically but also socially,” she says. “Every experience you have, every class you take, every internship you apply for – these are experiences that will shape you in so many ways. You are the master of your own fate.”
