Internships are something that nearly every college student has at one point in their career or another. Sometimes it is required by our major program in order to graduate or sometimes we have one because we feel like we need it.
Students never do an internship because we just want to. We never do one out of pure choice because they can't think of a better way to spend their time. We do it because We need it. Because society makes us need one.
Internships can range from a variety of hours that are required since the employer usually wants oh so many hours from their intern. They require certain duties of their intern and basically set us up like we are going to be employed with them. We are required to go in and work, clock in and clock out, and not be paid.
Work as hard as we can and take up a lot of our time doing this job for nothing more than a reference letter and an extra line on our resume.
Sometimes students will give up their jobs in order to get that internship. We will GIVE UP our PAYING JOB in order to work twice as much and as hard for no money at all because society tells us that we need that. Just one semester of working 12.5 hours a week could amount to around $2,000 but instead, we have to chalk it up to 225+ hours of work.
Sure, they might work somewhere where they might get a discount on a service or product but that isn't enough.
College students have to work for money to be able to sustain themselves after college and even during. Sometimes we are working our internship, actual job, and going to school full time because we need those funds and that experience. It is unfair for ANY company to ask a college student to work for free for no compensation.
It isn't right. They would never ask an employee to do that just because they have a degree. We went through the same interview process and might even wind up with the same qualifications that our 'boss' has but we aren't even paid.
We need to be paid and we deserve to be paid. We are sitting at a desk doing the same thing that you are paying actual workers for; we might even be doing work that is attracting business to your company and we aren't being paid.
It isn't right that society is forcing us to do that. Companies, employers, set aside $2,000 of your budget and pay an intern that money. We need it and we deserve to have it.
That's great if you think that we are doing a great job and you tell us that, that's great but it isn't enough. We feel overworked and under-appreciated for the mere fact that we aren't paid.
Take a serious look and ask yourself why you aren't paying your interns. You need to because there will come a point when we will stop entertaining the idea of a paid internship.
There will come a time when you are getting the scraps of the workforce because we don't want to deal with people that can't even bother to pay us for our work. Think about that. We are working hard and we deserve it, so pay us.
