We lurk around office halls, trying to look like we're not freshly out of our teens and conspicuously readjusting our sale-rack H&M blazers. We'll stay out too late the night before, only to roll out of bed hating ourselves as we turn off our 6:30 a.m. alarm clocks. We commute in masses, in vaguely familiar cities, always regretting not leaving earlier and cursing some sort of institution (public transit, highway system, Obama). Sometimes we do menial tasks like making coffee, filing papers and answering phone calls with gritted teeth. Some call it a rite of passage, others call it the "spring board" to your future, most of the times I call it free labor.
This summer college students around the country will be flocking to the nearest internship that they can justify having on their resume. We've become masters of connecting a string of jobs and work experiences into a narrative of passion. How can I prove to this company that a low skill, low wage job I did freshman year of college actually proves that I have an undying desire to study law one day? We've read news articles and books on how to convert that unpaid internship into a job after college, and have listened to our family's advice on how to "make the most" of this opportunity. But we, the college intern, usually fail to see the positives of an internship as we are participating in it.
This semester I took an unpaid internship and my mindset from the beginning was to "just get through it" so I could add it to my resume. I felt like I was a transient part of the office and saw my pending last day as the deadline of my relationship with my colleagues. My internship was one more burden in my already colorful Google calendar schedule. But the early mornings got easier, the nerves of working in a fast pace office were subdued, and the full work days increasingly felt shorter. And I started experiencing moments of the day when I thought "I could never learn this inside a classroom."
I begin to go out of my way to work harder, not for the letter of recommendation that I would request afterwards, but because I finally felt invested in the well being of my office. And it was in this moment that I knew the internship was worth it - unpaid or not. My colleagues became mentors to me, fondly remembering their college days and suggesting paths I should take after undergraduate. And the weekly task of commuting to my internship became a time I could unwind, physically away from campus and the bubble that any college town is set within. I became, if only for a short time, a little gear that was crucial for operations in my office. And that gave me agency and purpose during a time in college when a lot of the future seems unclear.
This summer I will be interning again in a city very far away from home. But I will not feel alone because I will be surrounded by the thousands of college interns who are bonded together in this "secret life".
We, the college intern, will be entering an office near you very soon.
