Greedy, greedy students.
What’s an internship?
I would define it is a worthwhile yet relatively too short experience teaching you vital skills that you wished you learned in all these years in school.
Yup. It’s unfortunate but we don’t get enough internships and have to wait until we’re a certain age to actually start learning real-life skills.
As students, we have to deal with quite a bit of hurdle and pressure from a young age, especially in college. Although many of us are eligible for scholarships and do obtain them, the number of student loans and debt is a major problem in the US. Learning to build a reputable credit score, find our niche, and most importantly, ourselves along with dealing with the pressure of applying to internships, feels like a never-ending cycle of trying to prove ourselves that we are worthy of obtaining experience since high school.
From applying to college to internships the next year, summer doesn’t even feel like a break anymore!
Yet, there is no shortage of internships but for many students, the choice between if it is paid or not is the final question.
As someone who’s had an internship and jobs since middle school, I never cared if they were paid. Of course, it is good to earn a good credit score by opening a credit card once you make income, yet at this age, our main job is to be students not make money becuase if we focus on too many things, we can’t get anything done.
If we pay for school that teaches us little to none of what is actually expected in the real world, why is it a problem to not pay for an internship?
An internship is a free top of the line education. No, I’m not talking about an IVY league school because every school will teach you the same topics in biology or finance, nothing is different about the elite schools than the rest, but rather the top of the line education means that you are exposed to connections, the workplace environment, your passions or interested fields in life, a perspective on work-life balance, hosting meetings, using technology, and countless other skills you naturally learn without realizing.
Hear this. I even PAID for an internship this summer because as a freshman in college, it is very difficult to find an internship in the field of business/technology that will value my work.
Another reason why non-paid internships are perfectly fine is that you won’t learn more being paid. In fact, as young as you are, you will feel more obligation on your end while resulting in you being stressed out that you are paid and your team will expect you to know what’s going on.
Bottom Line: Education is the best investment because you can never take it away from yourself and it always appreciates in value. Focusing on the pay is crucial when you are supporting your household, but fellow students, if you want to learn, you have to become less picky and take advantage of the opportunity because you might not even get the chance with that firm again.