On a campus where most students pursue an internship or academic experience during the summer, some students like Marshall, Hopke and Lesh are choosing less-conventional paths. Those who have elected to pursue such jobs said that, in doing so, they will gain unique knowledge and skills while doing enjoyable work.
“I just want to gain some more skills as far as hands-on experience goes,” Marshall said in an e-mail.
When he was 15, Joshua Levine ’12 started what became the Fortis Academy, which he called an “athletic leadership training camp.”
“It’s teaching me a lot of things you learn once you get into the business world ... You learn everything,” Levine said of running his own business.
Michael Newman ’13, who will either lifeguard or repair computers this summer, said he does not see a benefit from taking an internship at this point in his career. “I’m not qualified to do anything yet,” the prospective computer science major said. “Until I start delving into my department a little more deeply, [an internship] really won’t matter. It won’t mean anything to me.”
Levine also said he did not see the appeal of most internships, which he said “just seem overrated to me unless you’re getting real experience that’s teaching you business skills.”
“I really don’t understand the value ... if it’s grunt work,” he added.
Money can be a factor as well, as many internship positions are unpaid. Hopke, Levine and Newman all cited financial concerns in explaining their decisions to work over the summer. “I didn’t have the money to take an unpaid internship,” Hopke explained.
While the largest source of pressure to purse a traditional summer internship may be other students, those pursuing alternative paths said that the Office of Career Services also contributes to the internship-dominated culture on campus.
Career Services does not post “non-professional opportunities” on its website, but students can consult the office for “guidance on how to leverage these employment experiences and highlight transferable skills on their resume when applying for future internships or full-time jobs,” Director of Career Services Beverly Hamilton-Chandler said in an e-mail.
She added that it is “ideal for students to have at least one professional internship experience before graduation.”
Lesh plans to follow this advice by pursuing a more conventional internship next summer. He said that an internship after junior year is almost a necessity at Princeton.
Marshall said he believes Princeton “definitely pushes towards internships” more than other schools. “All my friends in Georgia are doing whatever they can to make money over the summer,” he explained. “For the most part, they couldn’t care less about a resume.”
A lot of Princeton students “see internships the way a lot of us saw extracurriculars in high school: as a way to get ahead,” Newman said.
Hopke said she thought Career Services offered less guidance for students who weren’t pursuing internships.
“I felt ... that [with Career Services] you were pushed more towards career building — more towards the money and less towards the experience,” she explained.
Hopke, who had attended presentations given by Career Services, said she “never felt as though [Career Services] pushed you towards something you actually wanted to do.”
But Hamilton-Chandler said that Career Services aims to promote “the value of experiential learning to students, encouraging them to pursue experiences through which they can explore career-related interest and enhance their skills.”
“All summer experiences have value because they offer the opportunity to explore, to try new things, to learn more about yourself and/or a profession — all while broadening your knowledge and skills,” she added.
Students interviewed for this article said that regardless of any pressure, they were not deterred from pursuing their own paths.
“I never felt like I needed to look for an internship,” Hopke said.
Though many other students may be completing professional internships, “I’m certainly not ashamed about my summer plans,” Newman added.
Lesh, meanwhile, said that he is excited to learn a new skill. “I don’t want to go into [an internship] because it’s what everyone else is doing,” he said.
“This summer I have one last free chance to do something fun,” he explained. “This is the last time in our lives we actually get a summer.”
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