If you’ve read an internship description, chances are you’ve come across the words “real-world experience,” or at least a comparable term. For many interns, however, it’s hard to know what that really means. Some students may find that their internship provides very applicable and exciting “real-world” experience. Unfortunately, though, some may find that the term rings hollow.
The cliché (yet still prevalent) coffee-grabbing, data-inputing, TJ-Maxx-tie-wearing intern exists to this day, and likely wishes that they were experiencing a little less of the “real world.” Competing for a job in 2015 means having an impressive summer, which has been thoroughly defined as having an internship. Naturally, students go out and find internships, knowing full well that their resumes will need to shine as brightly as their sweat-laden foreheads during their first job interview. So we apply in droves to internships that glorify menial and repetitive tasks. Yet any worthwhile employer wants more from a student than a CitiBank Intern of the Week Award and eight weeks of coffee-stained slacks.
If you can’t relay how your eight weeks were spent, or how they pertain to not just your potential employer, but also yourself, how do you know that it was all worthwhile? If, at the end of your summer of “real-world” experience, you can’t passionately tell someone about how much you learned and how it changed you as a person, then what was the purpose? It may sound drastic to say that an internship “changed” you, but that should be the goal. The key to a successful summer should not be resume-building. A successful summer should be defined by experiences that push you past where you were before personally, socially, and professionally. That doesn’t always involve an internship.
Reading all of that, you may be thinking, “This kid didn’t have an internship this summer, did he?” I did not. Good guess. I did have a small gig transcribing interviews for a writer in Los Angeles, but the hours were short and it was all done remotely. The rest of my summer was spent working in my mom’s bakery and taking a research trip to China for three weeks. While a research trip to China can be an incredible resume-builder, it’s the experience I had working for my mom that I truly believed helped me better understand my place at home, at school, and in the competitive job market that everyone loves to yell about.
My parents have been involved in the restaurant world their entire lives. From my dad’s stint as a manager at Burger King when he was in high school, to my mom’s time at Rhode Island School of Design’s culinary program, food has always been a huge part of their lives. For nine years they owned one restaurant, and then two, earning countless “Best Caterer” and “Best Bakery” awards along the way. I’ve probably spent more times arguing about how my mom’s cookies are the best than I have watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (quite the feat). When my mom decided to re-enter the culinary field this summer by opening a bakery after an eight-year hiatus, I had to be a part of it. Failing to get an internship provided me with just that opportunity.
My mom gave me about 24 hours to recover from finals before I was helping set up her dream. The first week that I was home, we were frantically running around her newly-rented shop space, in which her and her boyfriend had previously been sleeping. They couldn’t sacrifice a second of preparation, so they had taken to snoozing for a few hours a night in the back room of what was soon-to-be the Union Street Bakery and Cake Shop. In that first week I was home I learned more about myself and one hundred other things than I would have coordinating social media for some corporation in New York. Since that first week, I’ve learned how to wire outlets from a breaker, how to fix leaks and breaks on the fly, and how refrigeration works. I’ve learned what goes into the perfect potato salad, what makes good cookies good, and how to properly knead bread. I’ve programmed a cash register, memorized Maine’s tax code, and painted until the fumes nearly knocked me out. I’ve served people the “best muffin [they’ve] ever had” and turned away disappointed customers looking for gluten-free everything (is this salad gluten free?). I've coordinated social media pages and talked with food distributors. Most agonizingly, I've spent hours researching the most cost-effective way to accept credit cards. All of this, practical and impractical, was part of starting a business that has yet to really find its footing, and I’m ecstatic about that.
The point is, this summer I helped a business start from the beginning, and watched it become busy to the point where I wanted to stage a fake salmonella outbreak just to clear out everybody clamoring for a Curry Chicken Salad sandwich. I didn’t land the internship of Joey Resume’s dreams, but I learned how operating a small business works, how hiring works, and how to teach someone something effectively. I had crash-courses in economics, marketing, and customer service. I firmly believe that I spent the summer before my senior year hanging out in my mom’s bakery, and it was the best thing I could have done. I mean that in personal, professional, and academic terms. Yes, I missed out on the resume-boosting internship that some people get to wave around at their TelAmeriCorp interview. But that’s a tragic loss that I’m willing to take. How many other people get to say that they wake up every day eager to get to work? In the future, I’ll look back on this summer as one of incredible growth. I’ll look back on it as the experience that I can describe passionately to a potential employer as an example of who I am, and what I can add to their company. Maybe my passionate speech about working for my mom will be lost on whoever hires for JPMorgan Chase, but so be it. They don’t make delicious bread like my last job.
