To Intern or Not to Intern: Judging an Internship’s Worth

While professors may sell you the importance of internships like they are getting a cut of the profits, you must decide whether an internship is worth your time and energy. The one trait that internships typically share is that many of them involve no monetary compensation. Even if gaining experience overrides your financial needs, you owe it to yourself to consider how this voluntary commitment will affect your life.

This is not to devalue the importance of getting your hands on some professional experience; rather, I wish to offer ideas to keep in mind when searching for internships. While these are great opportunities to extend your resume and network with influential people, internships should not be accepted without seriously considering whether they will fit your life. These search tips will help you decide if an internship is feasible for you.

Room for growth: Read job descriptions closely (beyond salary mentions!) to see if there is any indication of the internship turning into a full-time position. Employers are often eager to fill holes with competent interns. This should not be critically important to your decision, but it is worthwhile to keep an eye out for anything that might suggest upward mobility.

While at the company’s website, check for entry-level openings either in your department of interest or another. Colleagues like to talk about impressive interns, and your supervisor could put in a good word for you with other departments who are hiring. Your professional interests may change over time anyway—or maybe after working pro bono long enough any paying job will sound appealing.

Commute: While you may not want to limit yourself to businesses within your immediate area, you have to consider how traveling to the internship will effect your daily life. Ask yourself:

• How will I get there?
• Will public transportation get expensive without a monthly pass?
• Assuming there is bad weather or another delay effecting one mode of transportation, are there other means of getting there?
• Can I handle the stress (physical and/or mental) or commuting?

The first three questions are straightforward, but the last may need explaining. Grad school courses presumably take place in the evening so that students can work during the day. Classes often last for hours, and then you have to commute back home—only to wake up bright and early the next morning. Even if your internship is two or three days a week, long morning commutes after long nights of class add up to extra long days at work. For the sake of your health, you have to consider the toll that a long commute may take on your body. Not everyone can gulp down several cups of coffee to counteract the sleepy effects of grad school.

Small vs. Large: Think about the benefits of either office environment related to your needs:

• Small offices might demand a heavy workload from interns, which can be stressful in addition to schoolwork, but great in terms of gaining extensive professional experience.

• Large office internships probably involve more clerical work, which may inspire frustration; however, a big company might be able to afford taking you on full-time. If it’s a prominent company in your industry, just having their name on your resume is worth the experience.

For other tips on the internship search, see Miranda's “Unpaid Internships: the Tough Questions” post. Happy hunting!

Unpaid Internships: the Tough Questions

Along with specialized coursework, internships are an effective way to gain experience in a specific field. They're very common for graduate students. However, the decision to pursue an internship might be a tough one if you're considering one of the many unpaid internships out there. Here are some key points to seriously consider before accepting:

What's the time commitment?
Some internships require only a few hours each week, while others demand an almost full-time schedule. Most importantly, you should have a good idea of how this commitment might affect your attendance or performance in school. Will you still be able to adequately prepare for each class and get there on time?

Another consideration that particularly impacts graduate students is the time unpaid internships take away from the time they'd normally be working other jobs for pay. Can you afford to take this time away from a paying job to work for free? Unpaid internships often make up for this shortcoming in the form of valuable experience and connections, but you have to establish a financial plan to cover your most important necessities, such as rent and food, before taking on an unpaid commitment.

What about doing an internship for credit?
Not all schools require it, but graduate programs generally allow students to earn course credit for internships they complete. If you're paying for your own tuition, either out of pocket or through student loans, keep in mind that you'd have to pay this rate for an internship, too.

What are your goals for this internship?
All internship programs are different. Are you hoping for hands-on experience and responsibility? Or, even if the internship involves a lot of time in the mail room, are you more concerned with the connections you could make with professionals in your field? Working for free could become a frustrating experience, so you should determine if the benefits will make it worthwhile. This may be true for some internships but not for others.

So, if you're thinking about applying for or taking an unpaid internship, be sure to determine if it's the right fit for you first.