My dad never went to college. My siblings and I were raised on the tenets of hard and honest work, no matter how much we hated our jobs. In high school I bagged groceries at a local supermarket. For two years, I bit my tongue as suburban moms complained about the rising price of peaches and the bruises on their cantaloupes. But I never regretted taking the job, because even though I absolutely loathed standing for five hours ringing up groceries, I had one thing to be grateful for: I was getting paid.
Two summers ago, when I returned home from a trip to Europe without work, I turned down the only paying job I could find—teaching basic math to a classroom of five-year-olds—to live in East Hampton, New York for a month as an unpaid intern for a local artist. My dad’s reaction was, predictably, disbelief as to why I would turn down good money and work for free. I had to explain that the experience was more useful than the small amount of money I could have earned, and that these days, most students intern at some point during their undergraduate years. How else did he expect me to find a job after college?
Although I didn’t earn any money doing the internship, I received subsidized living and three meals a day, which I realize in retrospect is more than many interns get. This past summer, I found myself in a similar predicament. After working on a farm in Spain for a month with my friend, where we received free housing and all the food and wine we could consume in exchange for painting a roof for three hours a day, I returned home once again without a job. Apparently, I am overqualified to work at Starbucks and under-qualified for everything else, so I perused Craigslist for internships. I was aiming high—for a paying one—but was even willing to do something unpaid just to stave off boredom.
While the social phenomena of the unpaid internship wasn’t anything new to me, I only recently became aware of the growing number of unpaid internships at small businesses. Big-name publications, museums, and television stations offer unpaid positions in exchange, I suppose, for their names on your resumé. But this year, I noticed that there were more ads for internships at jewelry stores and private galleries, as well as countless web design positions. Many advertise their internships as “more than pouring coffee,” so you’ll get to do all the work of a paid employee—without the pay. I opted to spend the few weeks I had left in the summer reading all the books that have been collecting dust on my shelf and catching up with friends and family. Maybe I didn’t gain any resumé-building experience, but it paid just as well.
Of course, there are numerous internships which offer great experience and, occasionally, a fair wage. Nevertheless, I remain astonished at the rising number of unpaid opportunities out there. Students sometimes even have to buy their own lunch and pay for their own transportation, which means they aren’t even breaking even.
A few weeks ago I saw an advertisement for an internship at a small business in Georgetown which custom designs wedding invitations. I showed up to the interview to find that not only would I not be getting paid, but that I was required to commit to a minimum of fifteen hours a week and that I would be “seeing a project from start to finish”; in other words, doing the exact same work as the two owners of the shop. I was informed that I could receive school credit for the work, even though I would probably be putting in more hours than I do for any one class. Needless to say, I won’t be biting that bullet anytime soon. Maybe Safeway is hiring. I have experience!
