It's one thing to explore a new job or career by reading about it or by talking to people who are doing it. But for many job seekers and career changers, the only way to really explore a new occupation is to experience it firsthand - to learn by doing.

How? Through an internship, paid or, quite often, unpaid.

Internships used to be the almost exclusive realm of college and high school students. But these days, with the typical adult changing jobs or even careers several times, more and more experienced professionals are arranging internships or similar experiences for themselves to see if the perceptions they have of a certain job or career match reality.

Take Sharon Keys Seal, for example, a professional business coach and facilitator and president of Baltimore-based Coaching Concepts, a firm that specializes in helping people articulate and achieve their professional goals. Five years ago Seal was director of operations at Grace Fellowship

How Can You Land an Internship? Finding an internship, no matter what your age, is a job in and of itself. Fortunately there are many ways you can approach the task -- especially if you're already an experienced worker and job seeker. You can: Arrange an internship on your own. When Sharon Keys Seal of Baltimore-based Coaching Concepts was looking for a consulting internship in 1995, at age 42, she took the direct approach. "I researched all the consulting firms in Baltimore," she says, "sat down and called every single one, and ended up landing an unpaid internship with a local consultant." Work with a local college or university career counselor. Many college and university career services offices - especially those at two-year community colleges - work not only with their own students but also with members of the community at large. You may have to pay a nominal (or not-so-nominal) fee for these services, but the expertise and personal connections you'll be able to tap into may well be worth the financial investment. Network with family, friends, and members of local professional groups. Perhaps your spouse's company works with corporate clients that would be willing to take you on as an intern. Or perhaps there's a professional organization in your community made up of people working in the field you're thinking of pursuing; you could attend the group's next meeting to find out, and to put out feelers for internship possibilities. Work with a private career counselor. This route can be somewhat expensive, depending on the counselor's fees, but his or her knowledge of the local employment market may save you time and expense in the long run. Use Monster.com and other resources. New internship listings appear on Monster.com every day. Consider setting up a Monster.com "agent" that will alert you by email when any internships matching your requirements appear on the site. You can also use one or more of the published internship directories that come out every year. Among them: Peterson's Internships 2001 (published by Peterson's), America's Top Internships, 2000 Edition (published by Princeton Review), and ). -- Peter Vogt

Church in Timonium, Maryland, a job she very much enjoyed. But something was missing, and opportunity kept knocking.

"I always had a line of folks outside my door to talk with me about their work, strategic thinking, conflict resolution, and management issues," says Seal, who recently celebrated her 47th birthday. "I had a fabulous job that I loved, but I decided that I wanted to 1) be in the 'real' world - though it's still debatable to me which is more 'real,' the secular or religious world; 2) work with small business owners to strengthen and encourage them in their work; and 3) work on my own and not have any employees."

The world of consulting sounded like the perfect fit, Seal says. But she wanted to know for sure. So she offered to serve as an unpaid intern for Dudley Davis of Davis Consulting in Lutherville, Maryland. She paid the bills with her husband's financial assistance and with the salary she earned from a part-time job as a business manager for an advertising and public relations company. Hers was a calculated risk, she acknowledges, but one that paid off - in more ways than one.

"I learned what a consultant does, how to market consulting services, how to do a sales call and presentation, a lot about follow-up, how to design consulting work so that it meets the need of a specific client, how to price services, and what clients value and want," says Seal. "I also learned how to develop collateral pieces on my work and services, the importance of a network, how to overcome my fear of calling folks to see if they could benefit from our services, how a small business is run, and that I could do much of the work I was seeing."

Gwen Biasi offers a similar story of "adult internship" success. Biasi, 31, is now a thriving account executive for Public Communications Inc., a downtown Chicago public relations firm. But just four years ago, she was a dissatisfied assistant facility operations manager for Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls.

"Something was missing in my life: happiness," says Biasi. "I dreaded getting up in the morning and going to work. I remembered a time, though, when I was helping to promote a musical production. I remembered being happy doing that, and being successful at it. So I decided to pursue a career in marketing."

There was just one small problem: Biasi didn't have any "real" experience in the field.

"Everyone I contacted was leery about hiring me, without formal marketing experience and without a marketing degree," she remembers. "So I went back to school part-time in the evenings to earn a degree in marketing."

She also took on a part-time job as promotions coordinator for radio station WNND-FM in Chicago. Later, she pursued a full-time paid internship as an event planner for Eventors Inc. in Chicago, as well as another full-time paid internship working in the public relations department of the Chicago Tribune.

She didn't have much of a leisure life during this time, she admits, and it wasn't always easy adjusting to the decreased responsibilities associated with being an intern. "But after a while," she says, "I learned to enjoy the freedom, and the fact that the responsibility for the world was not on my shoulders."

She also learned that the public relations field was indeed a good fit for her - and, with the guidance of a few Tribune colleagues, she landed her current position just over a year ago.

Seal and Biasi are just two of many "adult internship" success stories. Are you ready to add your name to the list?