Internship season is fast-approaching. For the last seven months or so, I have been mentally and practically preparing to apply for the Library of Congress Junior Fellows 2013 Internship. By January 23, two professors submitted letters of recommendation and I submitted the various materials which the Library of Congress requested.
Those of you who know me know that I eagerly await the day when I receive the magical job title of Young Adult Librarian, which represents much of why I want this internship so badly. The Junior Fellows internship interests me otherwise because a) It's the Library of Congress -- um, hello!, b) The internship would be an excellent addition to my resume/an excellent life experience, c) I'm really interested in the work that I would potentially be doing (that is with the Center for the Book, though I may also work in the manuscripts division or with humanities in looking at baseball-related material), and d) I could spend the summer with my boyfriend. Plus, the stipend which the Library of Congress offers would be incredibly helpful to pay off some student loans. (Can I get an "amen"?)
While I wait for the Library of Congress to call or email or however they decide to schedule a phone interview, I've been sniffing around other interning possibilities. At this point, my English major is basically useless, unless I'm interested in journalism (which I'm not -- I tried that in high school). However, I have looked into other library opportunities (of which there are few to none), event-planning (because I do that like a boss already, let's face it), teaching (because why not?), and whatever else appears as I sift through various websites.
For those of you looking for your true-internship-love, I recommend the following sites to help guide you on your search.
www.simplyhired.com
www.internships.com
www.craigslist.com (No, I'm not kidding.)
www.college.monster.com
www.internmatch.com
As I've hunted around the last few months, I've picked up on a lot of frustrating things about internships. For one thing, most of them don't pay. Before all of the Baby Boomers start yelling at me that the world doesn't owe me anything, let me finish. Most of the internships are in big cities. I (and many other students) do not have the means to live in big cities. Therefore we need some kind of monetary compensation to live on. Furthermore, I don't know if you've noticed, but college is expensive. I do not want to spend the rest of my life suffocating under loans and, yeah, a few thousand dollars would be excellent help.
Second, many of these internships require previous experience. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't getting experience what internships are all about? I can live with some internships requesting students who have completed their undergraduate degree (albeit not happily live with it), but when the internships require experience in business, marketing, retail, and three years of journalism, that's asking too much. Believe it or not, this is not much (or at all of) an exaggeration of these descriptions.
Third, some employers want students for an entire year. While this is possible for some students, it's not so easily done for most. Many of these students either have a job on campus or a job off campus in addition to being a full-time student. I know people who worked two or three jobs while being a full-time student, but it seems they didn't enjoy or get much out of their experience. Spreading students too thin won't lead to a great amount of experience in various fields -- in fact, because they are unable to focus on just a few things rather than several, they will miss out on valuable opportunities.
Fourth, it seems many of these internships simply do not offer a great deal of actual experience. Employers use interns for grunt work. I am not totally opposed to this, but I do feel that we should stop selling internships as opportunities to gain experience when they are not. This isn't to say that all internships are lacking this element. But look at some of the descriptions of internships on the sites I listed above. Several of them just entail copying, sending reports, etc.
I am really excited to start doing something out there. But I am a valuable person with valuable skills. I want to do something that means something to me, that means something to others, and offers me something in return.
Students -- what are your plans for this summer? Will you be interning? What is your ideal internship?
Employers and friends of employers -- feel free to send your leads along to me if you know of anyone looking for someone like me!
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