Friday, July 25, 2008

Stuff White People Like - Unpaid Internships

Internship: Any official or formal program to provide practical experience for beginners in an occupation or profession. When I was in college, I knew many people who would do ANYTHING to get an unpaid internship, including spending a lot of money to network to get that internship.

Shock blogger Stuff White People Like, says, if you were to present a white 19 year old with the choice of spending the summer earning $15 an hour as a plumbers apprentice or making $0 answering phones at Production Company, they will always choose the latter. In fact, the only way to get the white person to choose the plumbing option would be to convince them that it was leading towards an end-of-summer pipe art installation.

White people view the internship as their foot into the door to such high-profile low-paying career fields as journalism, film, politics, art, non-profits, and anything associated with a museum. Any white person who takes an internship outside of these industries is either the wrong type of white person or a law student. There are no exceptions.

If all goes according to plan, an internship will end with an offer of a job that pays $24,000 per year and will consist entirely of the same tasks they were recently doing for free. In fact, the transition to full time status results in the addition of only one new responsibility: feeling superior to the new interns.

So if you're having a margarita at Rio Grande and overhear someone complaining about their internship at Google... Just remind them that after the cost of a summer in the NYU dorms and bottles at Marquee, they are paying a lot for that internship. But then again if you are having happy hour at Rio Grande or partying at Marquee, chance are you are a white person who once had an unpaid internship.

1 comment:

MAXWELL LLOYD said...

I would have to agree with you about most 19 year olds taking the internship. If I was given the option there is no doubt I would choose the internship. Today students want to take advantage of any opportunity they have to distinguish themselves from the masses. An internship that leads to employment is ideal, but even if it doesn't the experience is still worth it. Quality internships are always beneficial even if they are unpaid.

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