Internships

I'd like to talk to you briefly about one of the deadly sins.  I am from a generation that lived in a dark time.  When I entered my senior year, the world had been ravaged by a deadly scourge manifested by mechanical bulls, Saturday night fevers, and shaking booties, a culture laid to waste by the evils of disco.  It was the year that Elvis died, the year that the Ebola virus emerged, and the year that Microsoft became incorporated, among other tragedies.  And worst of all in my senior year, there were no internships. But now, despite a flagging economy and swine flu, you live in a bright time. Boogie fever is dead, Fidel is gone, and the land is now filled with iPhones, Nickelback, and double-stuffed Oreos.  And best of all in your senior year, there are internships.

Now many of you have labored in your six years of college in pursuit of the almighty GPA under the misconception that the purpose of your education is to get a job.  However, we are not a vocational school, and it turns out that the purpose of your education is to become educated, which means to learn the knowledge and skills to help you in the many facets of your life.  One of those critical areas is success in your career, but all your degree and GPA can do is help to get you in the right pile of resumes for an interview.  At that interview you will likely be confronted by one of life’s most pernicious paradoxes:  you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience.  And therein lies the rub.

Enter the shining light of internships.  An internship is the opportunity to get experience now.  An internship is the opportunity to learn what you like, and importantly what you don’t like, about a career field.  An internship is the opportunity to create a differential advantage for the brand that is you.

Now is the time to manage your life, to stop finding reasons why you can’t and start finding reasons why you can.  I once had a roommate who was one course away from a degree in economics and quit school to become a bellhop.  Perhaps the siren call of toting luggage was overpowering, but more likely he didn’t know what to do about his future.  All of us reach that cross-road, frightened of what the Fates hold in store for us.  But you have the opportunity to see into the future and control your destiny through this thing called internship.

And at last we arrive at the moral of the story.  The deadly sin of which I have been speaking is not sloth or greed, it is envy.  I envy you the opportunity the lies before you.  How I wish that there were internships back in the dark days of the plague that was disco.  Without exaggeration, an internship is the single most powerful career-impacting life-managing destiny-changing action that you can take as you approach the cross-roads.  Yes you can, and I envy you.