As I write this column, it is almost the tenth week of spring semester. Many seniors are PTL, children and students are frolicking in the Woody Woo fountain, and I am still struggling to find a summer internship. As the end of the school year approaches, I am growing more resigned to the fact that I may not find an internship at all — and that is just fine.
I would imagine that there are others who are looking for jobs. But I do not know for sure, since we do not often talk about it. Instead, we celebrate the successes and discuss their details and logistics.
Career Services’ annual report highlights how 78 percent of students found internships last year. Searching through the Daily Princetonian’s archives uncovers several articles about funding unpaid internships and the value that different columnists found in their summer experiences. The only article to even mention internship-less summers was a piece penned in 1998 about a student’s pile of rejection letters. And even he had one job offer currently on the table.
Maybe the internship search just works out for everyone. But I have a strong feeling that is not the case. Rather, our silence on this issue stems from our tendency, as both Princeton students and as humans, to highlight what is great about our lives and ignore speaking about the many pressures and challenges we all face. Most students looking for internships thus find themselves feeling, at one time or another, alone and inferior to their peers.
A person unfamiliar with Princeton’s culture would probably ask, “Why do you place so much pressure on yourselves to find internships?” The specific reasons differ from person to person, but the general answer is: “internships are imperative for future success.”
But there are many definitions of “success” and countless paths to achieving the same goal. For me, mental well-being plays a large part in both academic and career success. Considering that this past school year has left me quite worn out, perhaps a summer to myself would place me closer to my goals than a stressful internship would. I am still searching for an internship, but I find myself thinking more and more that I am doing so in order to fulfill an outside expectation as opposed to pursuing my own dreams.
We believe that internships will make the difference between finding a career worthy of a Princeton student, and settling for a mediocre job (or no job at all). Internships thus serve as litmus tests for how successful we will be once we graduate. You will be better off if you find internships as opposed to not. Working for Google or Goldman Sachs or a prominent statesman will lead to more post-graduation success than interning for an unknown entity. Depending on where we fall on this arbitrary hierarchy of internship positions, we find validation or question our self-worth, and decide whether we measure up to the expectations society holds for Princeton students.
One could argue that the pressure we place on ourselves and inadvertently on each other is beneficial. It pushes us to make productive use of our summers and prepare ourselves for the job market. But we worry so much about following the path that the community lays out for us that we may not ask ourselves why we are looking for internships, as opposed to other opportunities, at all. We allow outside forces to dictate what we should do with our lives, as opposed to figuring it out for ourselves. Not finding an internship may seem like a hit to our pride. Since freshman fall we are told that we need internships every summer, and it feels like a massive failure to not fulfill this expectation. But even if our resumes do not grow, we can develop just as much as people — and that’s much more important in the long run.
Sarah Dinovelli is a history major from Groton, Conn. She can be reached at sarahmd@princeton.edu.
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