The Benefits of Internships From the Perspective of a College Dropout

I love internships. I've done it all; from spending entirely too much time on the job and meeting too many people as a Intern in the Computer Lab of the university I'd attented to attempting to stand up for myself, yet doing my career a serious disservice, by quitting without even having a face to face with my boss at a local Information Systems company. Work as an intern means you do exactly what you love to do; facing those challenges, resolving those issues, troubleshooting problems, and navigating through a myriad of office politics, sometimes. That's when it's fun, when it's not so much fun is when there isn't enough work to go around and you're paid a nice sum of money to fill in and do work no one else at the organization wants to do, like faxing and copying, and doing other remedial administrative tasks.

If your internship was your way of getting out of the house and obtaining college credit so you can put your co-op education class behind you, as it was for me, then you don't think that what happens there is that big of a deal, and it probably isn't as you will inevitably graduate from school and get a "real" job, per-se. What they don't, or probably can't (because you aren't listening), tell you, is that "real" work isn't' that much different. You're still starting at the bottom, and you still have you to prove yourself and yes you will still be pulled off of the "important" tasks to help out with what isn't important to you, but important to the organization at the time.

How much of a team player are you, really? Are you someone that is willing to do what needs to be done to advance the organizations goals or just someone who is looking to take money from the company and spend it on a pair of jeans at the mall? You should run your own personal life in a manner that is as organized and thorough as that of the company in which you work, and believe me, whatever job you get in the future, even if it is only to write on a freelance basis, is going to be defined by the way in which you present yourself to your employer and your coworkers, who you think are you your friends but are really being used by your boss to evaluate your performance. Why do you think they got a raise and a promotion and you didn't? If you want money, you have to act like it, dress as though you already have it, speak and act in a way to precludes that you are entirely too comfortable with it, and aren't impressed by it, and position yourself in a way that it does not define you. Anything else is going to keep you in the copy room in the basement of some insurance company in Brooklyn.

Take my aforementioned job at the I.S. firm; I had gotten off to a bad start, I didn't have transportation to work as I was working in another city and had a reputation for driving 90 M.P.H. down I-75 into the city where I was employed so I could cut down an hour and fifteen minute commute to 45 minutes, but that's neither here nor there. The real issue is that I wouldn't learn anything that anyone wasn't willing to teach me, and didn't have the resolve to tackle issues on my own without some engineer holding my hand. Fact is I walked around harassing people that were working on other projects to figure out how to test the software on my own (I didn't have the tools in which to set up the environment to begin with). I fell into the job, rather than rise above the circumstances and take control over it. I kept on with being reprimanded until I one day wrote a rather immature "Dear John" letter, and never turned back. What cowardice; it would have made some sense to deal with the boss student to man, or at least have someone stand in the interim that could help me out with that dilemma.

My other internship was a nice, cushy, on and off job at school assisting students with printer and OS issues in their computer lab. But the real problems were what happened when I needed work and had quit the internship for work out in the city and was trying to get back into the flow of things. I had digressed towards interviewing for work for my former boss at another school, and, true to form, had a habit of going back to former employers for work when the jobs I had left in the past didn't work out because the chances I thought I was taking by trying to get ahead didn't pan out. If you have any modicum of self-respect, move forward, not that going back to where you've come from is a step backwards, but unless the job you're going out for isn't a step ahead in and of itself, don't waste your time. Instead of preoccupying yourself with getting ahead, do the best that you can where you're at, and learn what you can because it's better to have a check with a job you don't care for than no check and no job, and no future. Eventually, if you push yourself and network more, selflessly (to help advance the goals of the organization, not to meet people that can help you get work outside of it), you will find that your job isn't that bad and can be approached in a different way that can bring about more fulfillment that you would have found elsewhere. I did a lot of dumb stuff in college, which is the short story, but it taught some lessons that have helped me actually grow and become a better employee later on. Take your internship for the opportunity that it is worth; one that people on the street would die for, regardless of what the wage is (if any), and one that can propel you to do great things in the future, preferably, upon graduation but if not then at least it can get you to thinking about what you should do with your life ...