Internships: Yes or no?

If you’ve kept up with the news during the last year or so, you’ll know there’s been a lot of buzz about internships. Many major newspapers have published articles and opinion pieces about various aspects of internships — from the whole unpaid versus paid debate to the value of internships in a career sense.

One general consensus gleaned from all these pieces is that internships are extremely important. They help you test out future careers and figure out what type of job you want in the future. More importantly, they are resume builders that are stepping stones to get to the career you want. On campus, internships are a hot topic, particularly at Career Services. I happened upon Career Services midway through freshman year and left an hour later feeling pretty overwhelmed. As a freshman, I had no idea what major I wanted, let alone what type of career I was interested in. So it was pretty stressful to listen to the “internships are important and you should absolutely start right now” rhetoric.

A couple months after that fateful meeting at Career Services, I was debating between doing an internship — as they had advised — or studying abroad and furthering my Spanish studies. After examining every aspect of the two options in an agonizing decision-making process, I ended up deciding to pursue an internship in my hometown that summer. One of the biggest factors influencing my decision was the thought that I had to do an internship that summer to get better internships the following summers. I told myself that it was never too early to start developing my resume and career prospects. With those sentiments firmly in mind, I thought I had made the best decision by choosing to do an internship that summer.

However, looking back, I didn’t get a whole lot out of that internship. It gave me something to do during the summer, but that was about it. I see now that I probably would have been happier and gotten more out of studying abroad instead. Conversely, an internship I did this summer before junior year was an amazing experience that was definitely worth doing. It taught me so much about what I want in a job and a workplace and even allowed me to experience a city I’m considering living in after graduation. So even though it was unpaid, it was well worth the added monetary expense.

Although Career Services are right when they say internships are important, the decision of whether or not to do an internship compared to something like study abroad goes back to value — and not only in the monetary sense. Weighing an internship in the sense of, “Will this help me to decide what I want in a career or a workplace?”, “Will this help me to decide where I want to live after graduation?” and other similar questions is also very important. Yes, internships are necessary to get you on the path to getting a good job. But that doesn’t mean that doing an internship is the right thing every summer.

After all, there is a big trade-off involved in doing a summer internship. Instead of getting the chance to rejuvenate from the school year, you have to deal with the stress and demands of the workplace. You give up the opportunity to study or volunteer abroad or get a normal summer job in your hometown. And because most internships are unpaid, you’re paying a couple thousand dollars to do this.

Even though most Princetonians are gung-ho about getting career-ready as soon as they can, I don’t think there should be so much pressure to do an internship every summer from the time you get to Princeton. A lot of the pressure to do an internship can be self-imposed, but some of the pressure does come from knowing that your classmates are spending their summers doing top internships all around the country. With so many people doing these amazing summer internships, it’s hard not to feel pressured to also do something impressive in order to have a good answer to the inevitable, “What did you do with your summer?” question that comes around in the fall. But as I’ve said, this pressure doesn’t mean that doing a summer internship is always the best decision.

So when you look at what to do with your summers here at Princeton, it’s important to really weigh all the options you’re considering, and then choose which one is best for you. Don’t get peer-pressured into doing an internship if you don’t think it will be worth it; not all internships are created equally and worth doing. But because internships can be amazing, rewarding experiences, my advice is to try both — do an internship one summer and then do something else the next: study abroad, volunteer, or just chill at home. Then, the only real problem is the plethora of options and the dearth of summers.