Editor's Note: This column was originally published on Sept. 10, 2003. - particularly salient as upperclassmen go through job applications and recruitment.
For many, "back to school" means a return to routine. Classes, books, papers, and problem sets will soon erase the fading wisps of summer freedom. But for college students, Princetonians in particular, stepping back on campus can actually be a much needed release from a summer of drudgery. This is because most of us did not spend our summers catching crayfish in a creek or basking on a beach, but rather sitting in small offices and performing small, often menial tasks. In short, we interned.
Freshmen take note: "To intern" is one of those verbs your writing seminar won’t tell you about, the kind that is best served by the passive voice. The reality is that we did not intern, but rather that we were interned by some exploitive organization in search of cheap labor. Here, of course, "intern" (accent on the second syllable) means, "to confine within prescribed limits," such as a cubicle (Webster’s). This alternate definition raises all sorts of interesting connotations, like the "internment camp" in Guantanamo.
Indeed, many returning Princetonians may feel as though they have just escaped from a razor wire-encircled tin shack in Cuba. Investment bankers perhaps suffer the most, toiling night and day (weekends too) in their high-rise sweatshops. The paychecks look large, but on an hourly basis it probably equates to flipping burgers. Those of us in the nonprofit world at least have a measure of free time, which is good because we need to work a second job to pay the rent. And while we scrape together another dinner of Ramen Noodles, places like Goldman Sachs and the State Department get top quality labor at bargain prices. Who needs to outsource to India when there’s a ready supply of overachievers right here in New Jersey?
The odd thing about these summer internment-ships, though, is that all the suffering and exploitation is voluntary. We applied for these positions (and competed with each other to get them), driven by two opposite but compatible impulses. Positively, we are go-getters who want to do something exciting and productive with our free time. More cynically, we want to spend our summers building resumes, not sand castles. But regardless of whether our motivation was altruism or egoism (or a combination of the two), sitting around watching reruns was not an option.
And on balance, that is probably a good thing. Many of us contributed a lot through our summer experiences, and learned a lot in return. We gained practical skills, made contacts and explored potential careers. The few bad experiences — the kind of job where you sit in a corner and observe, trying to drag out your work as long as possible to avoid bothering the more productive people — are probably outweighed by the good. My own experience with summer internships has been nothing but positive, and I think many other students would agree.
And yet, it seems there should be a limit to the amount of learning and experience one can cram into a summer. When I told a German coworker about my summer schedule, she was shocked by the lack of leisure time. "But when is your vacation?" she asked. "You’re looking at it," I replied, grabbing a thick stack of reading out of the printer. "That’s crazy," she said, looking at me with an expression somewhere between disbelief and pity. While cultural differences may account for some of this reaction (statistics show that Americans work the most in the industrialized world, Germans the least), on a more fundamental level, my coworker was, of course, correct. We may tend to forget it, but vacation is more than just an opportunity for extracurricular adventures. It is a rare moment of rest and recuperation that, like the negative space in a painting, compliments and enhances its opposite.
So while I immensely enjoyed my internship this summer, next year I hope to be thoroughly unproductive. Provided I don’t have a job or some other burden, my plan is to bum around an interesting part of the world, sailing the winds of whim and chance wherever they lead. Interning or being interned, it’s all the same — work. After a year at school, nothing beats a carefree, old-fashioned, do-nothing vacation.
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