Summer sucks. Let me just come out and say it. Summer sucks. Now that we are in college, summer just isn’t what it used to be – going to the pool, hanging out with all your friends, going to camp and so on. Now, we are adults, and we have to do adult things. Most importantly, we need to find summer jobs.
There are two main paths to take when working in between semesters during the long summer months: find an internship to further your career or find a job that gives you some spending money for the school year.
The first option is the internship that furthers your career. In most cases, you will make very little money if any at all. However, that resume of yours looks better afterward. And when you see one of your friends who is still working as a camp counselor or lifeguard, you look down on him and feel you are so much better than those ingrates.
Last summer, I took the unpaid internship route and worked on Capitol Hill. I worked hard, putting in more than 50 hours a week without making a single penny. However, I looked at my friends at home who were working at the local pizzeria and thought how much better I was than them. I was important. I was furthering my career. They were wasting their time.
Fast forward one year: I worked for a moving company and am now working as a painter. This is option two: doing manual labor, working for a camp or doing anything that will get you minimum wage or higher. Sure, it won’t look as good as Mr. Capitol Hill, but you will be laughing when you can afford gas or the cover charge at Thirsty Turtle (both of which are a bit too costly anyway).
However, there is still that nagging feeling of wasting your time, because your friends are working “important” jobs. I have experienced those feelings this summer, moving heavy loads or whitewashing entire floors of buildings for two weeks straight. Yeah, I’m making more than $15 an hour. But is it fulfilling? Absolutely not. In fact, I feel inferior when I see some of my friends working for accounting firms or law firms, while I am stuck ruining my $50 Nike track shoes splattering paint all over them.
All of this brings me to the point of this article: Why should there be a stigma attached to working a job over the summer that doesn’t further your career? Since when do we have to give up our childhood at the age of 18?
I know my parents didn’t. My mother was a waitress, and my father worked at a gas station during his summer breaks. Not having “important” internships didn’t prevent them from becoming a physical therapist or a doctor, respectively.
Why, in the year 2008, is the only way to get into graduate school working internships? I think all of this is nonsense. But, of course, this is the world we live in, where if you aren’t working to eventually make the big bucks in your career, you are wasting your time.
Mike Rosen is a senior government and politics major. He can be reached at mrosen11@umd.edu.
