This week is going to be a little rant-y, though in true Aesop's fable fashion there will be a moral at the end.
The other day a friend and I were drinking coffee, suddenly he turned to me and proclaimed, "I'm not going to bother applying for any internships." Silence as he stared across at me, magnanimous smugness and finality etched across his usually vacuous features, expecting me to be impressed or awed.
So I asked him why. His reasoning, he elaborated, was that he'd only end up "filing paper or making tea" and so it would be of no use to him. After this I switched off to the conversation, having decided him to be a moron and thenceforth dedicating my meagre 10% of cognitive brain space towards reciting all of Blackadder Goes Fourth internally.
The problem was that my friend was utterly convinced that internships were not for him - which is of course his prerogative - except his basis was entirely misplaced. If, for instance, he wanted to go into a sphere of graduate employment where an internship would be superfluous or unnecessarily time consuming, that would have been a fine conclusion to reach. Smart, even.
But no, this berk actually has quite high aspirations in a competitive field. OK, again, this does not mean he must undertake a prolonged period of such work-experience, particularly if he himself were to make a rational decision regarding the matter. It wasn't a rational decision, though. He had evidently heard a few rumours, maybe read a disgruntled blog, and decided it wasn't for him because he might be exploited.
How this could ever influence the process of choosing is beyond me, and yet many seem to increasingly discount internships because the concept get's a bad press, or else an article appears condemning the fact many are unpaid.
Please people, be smart. Not everyone goes through the same experience. There are good internships available out there, and a lot will give you the leg up you need. Go to the top bar and get clicking.
Jordan, GRB Journalist
