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.

Landing that "Grown Up" Job in the "Real World"

I took a year off in between undergraduate and graduate school because I didn’t decide to apply to grad school until I was almost finished being an undergrad. Once I made the decision to apply, I formulated what seemed like a simple plan at the time: move to location of desired grad school, find a job in a field of interest and continue working while taking classes. Armed with a bachelor’s degree and a strong desire to work, I thought it would be relatively easy to find a permanent, full-time, entry level office job. The past two years have taught me that a degree is not a free pass into the working world: dues must be paid to the gods of drudgery, boredom and coffee runs before the job with nameplate, paid vacation/sick time and health benefits is landed.

Although it’s not directly related to anything I hope to be doing in the future, I believe my job has given me valuable experience dealing with clients, co-workers, stress and the frustration that comes with being a cog in a corporate machine. All kidding aside, working in the “real” world has made me realize how important it is to have goals beyond getting a job that will pay the bills. I am happy with my job for now, but this is largely due to the fact that I know that I have other options and my “permanent” job is only temporary in reality.

If you are like I was and working in coffee shops, restaurants and clothing stores during your time in grad school doesn’t appeal to you, you may be wondering how to find that “grown up” office job with benefits. There are no hard and fast rules, but here are a few tips that helped me obtain my current job:

· Consider temp work. It may seem degrading, but working through a temporary employment agency is one of the best ways to gain experience and make connections at companies that may prove useful in the future. I was a temp at various companies before landing a position without the aid of a staffing agency. Some of the national temporary staffing agencies are: OfficeTeam, Kelly Services, Adecco, Randstad, Aerotek and Staffing Now.

· Listen more than talk during the interview process. Once I gained enough experience temping that my resume stopped falling into a black hole every time I applied for a job on Monster and CareerBuilder, I started going on interviews. After several failed meetings, I learned that successful interviews are not so much about answering questions as they are about carefully listening to the interviewer and clearly articulating responses that include their descriptions of the position, the skills required and the company.

· Write professional, personalized, thank you letters. My mother, along with every job hunting book I read, kept harping on the importance of writing a thank you letter after each and every interview. They weren’t kidding. The personalized thank you letters that I crafted to each one of the three people that interviewed me for my current position are largely why I was hired. My employers were impressed with my writing abilities and the initiative I took to reach out to them. It’s as simple as thanking them for their time, expressing an interest in the job and giving reasons why you are the best candidate.

ROUTINE! ROUTINE! ROUTINE!

I thought I’d be free to do as I pleased coming to grad school in Boston—I’d get a job as a waitress in the North End and speak Italian with the regulars. I was going to live in a great apartment with just one roommate (who was a fellow Midwesterner) and I was going to write, write, write. I came to study Creative Writing and write The Memoir that I had planned to write for years but never even knew where to begin. Well, it turned out—I didn’t even know where or how to begin living here—much less writing here.

Yes, I ended up working as a waitress, but quit after the low season hit and I was making on average $8 a day. Yes, I lived with that roommate of mine from the Midwest, but quickly found our ideas of cleaniliness and order to be sourly mismatched. And the writing? Well, I was writing—whenever I managed to clear off my cluttered desk and find a moment when I wasn’t exhausted from work or a hangover to get the crazed jumble of words out and onto a page.

Well, let’s just say—things changed once I got a job with regularly scheduled hours. Yeah, you come to grad school with one goal in mind (for the most part): do well. Because if you do well, you somehow might manage to not waste the money and time you spent getting a master’s degree in the first place. If you do well, you might leave here proud of yourself and not knee deep in regret and failure.

I was headed down the latter route once I started working retail and never knowing what my week was going to be. After getting my new “regular job” (though a café worker at an all women’s gym is hardly “regular”) I started being able to actually plan my day. Plan my writing schedule. Plan my life. And now I find myself strolling into my apartment around the same time everyday and finding that my mind starts churning out coherent thoughts that actually make me think that maybe, just maybe—I’ll finally get this memoir finished.