It’s that time of the year where undergraduates are scrambling to find internships –– any internship, really. Most of the time it isn’t for the experience or because it’s an internship that you're passionate about like you so eloquently stated in your cover letter. No, usually it's because you feel obligated to have an internship since all your friends and everyone else your age are getting them.
It’s not like undergraduate students truly want to join this ‘real world’ already. We want to be spending our summers worry-free, working jobs that are fun and living with friends –– not cooped up in an office cubicle, sweating in a suit and 'gaining that real-world experience’ by making photocopies and cold calls. We know the real world is coming, but let us have our last couple summers as college students.
What I strongly dislike about today’s system is that undergraduates are feeling the pressure to secure internships that align with their professional interests before they really know what they want to do. Sure, we’ve declared our majors and have our interests, but we’re only 20-or-so years old. How are we supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives?
There’s a sentiment nowadays that if you do not land an internship associated with your major as an undergraduate, you are far behind the masses and unlikely to get that job you want when you graduate. Swamped by college loans and unemployed –– that’s not a position anyone wants to be in. So you find yourself in a predicament: you feel the need to get that important internship, but you want to work on that fishing charter or golf course one last time before you join the real-world. But since everyone else is getting them and you don’t want to be behind, you begin applying and applying and applying.
One of the worst parts of applying for internships, besides the constant thought lurking in the back of your head saying you don’t want to do this, is actually applying. Where do you begin? LinkedIn maybe? Handshake? LookSharp? All of these internship/job finder sites can be helpful, but only if you sign-up and make a profile, complete with all of your interests, skills, resume and academic achievements. Great. No one wants to keep filling out the “Tell me about yourself” sections. It also seems that almost all internships you find interesting have the “All Qualifications Met” notification beside them. "Cool," you think, so you apply, fill out the generic application, answer the pertinent questions, and then you wait. And wait and wait some more.
You apply to five or six internships, and find yourself in a situation where you don’t know whether to continue waiting or if you should apply for more internships. You think, “If I don’t apply to more, I don’t have the best chances of getting an internship or I might miss the deadlines of others,” but at the same time “what’s the point of applying to more if I don’t really want that position?”
In the end, it can be agreed upon that there is nothing fun about the hunt for internships. For all the undergraduates applying for internships, feeling down by the lack of call-backs or interview success and feeling hopeless, just remember that they are only internships and to enjoy your years as a college student. Find a job or if you’re lucky, an internship that truly interests you and that you will enjoy doing for the summer because before you know it, you will be in the real world. Rent will become real. Cell phone bills will become real. Healthcare bills will become real. And to pay for all of that, you will need your real job. But that can wait because when you join that real world, you will not necessarily have the same freedoms and lifestyle as you do now –– so enjoy it while you can, and do not stress over these things called internships.
