I am currently a culinary student and I did an extended stage (externship) at COI in San Francisco. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I was there as a stage for a little over 5 months. I worked long hard hours that I will never forget. I opened the restaurant up at 7:30am or 8am every day and would usually finish my closing duties by 11pm. I did everything from pick seaweeds, juice citrus, make family meal, pick herbs, tend plant and pick our micro-green garden, peel fresh yuzu and make yuzu koshu and yuzu-panettone with our pastry chef, make beet roses, clean garbage cans, fold linens, forage with our chef de cuisine, scrub floors, and I was even a dishwasher for two nights and all of these things have made me a better person and cook. I went in with an open mind and expected to do grunt work and that is what I started doing, but I showed promise and by the end of the experience I was doing things that I never could have imagined.
The best advise I received on this stage was to write everything down. Write down ideas, recipes, methods, ingredient names, peoples names, each tool in the kitchen and a description, ideas on how to become faster, conversations that you have with people, write it all down no matter how inconsequential you think it is, WRITE IT DOWN. It shows you care and after a year or so when you want to remember how they made that killer dish you can look back at your notes and re-create it yourself.