To whom it may concern,
I am an average college student feeding into society’s pressures. Please give me a summer internship to validate and give meaning to my résumé, filled margin-to-margin with student-organization involvement.
With a little variation, I’m sure you’ve written a cover letter with a similar message to the one above, hopefully one with slightly less-obvious desperation. If you’re anything like me, or the people I know, you’ve written a seemingly infinite number of these cover letters.
The pressure to have a summer internship is insane. It’s not only viewed as a helpful addition to your résumé, but it’s now recognized as a necessary prerequisite for the “real world” job-hunting battlefield.
A quick glance over the daily B-Line emails indicates the emphasis on the summer internship dream. As students, we are constantly bombarded with tips on how to build a better résumé, write a better cover letter or make more connections. We’ve been flooded with this idea that a summer internship is not a perk, it’s essential.
Not only are summer internships hard to come by, but even if you do meet all the requirements, they are a privilege that not all can afford. A significant number of summer internships are for credit only with no compensation. Especially with the increasing costs of college tuition, many students need the money from summer jobs to help pay for the cost of college.
This leads into the upper-class privilege of the summer internship. Those with more money are more likely to take the risk of a no-pay summer. Likewise, they’re more likely to have connections who can help get their foot in the door with summer internship opportunities.
I understand the importance of internships as a prerequisite for a job. Clearly, real world experience is going to be more beneficial than a retail job at a mall or spending the summer tanning all day at the beach. But to what extent is the stress placed on students about summer internships really necessary?
According to collegeparents.org, in a 2009 survey, 85 percent of college students reported feeling stress on a daily basis. Sixty-seven percent of college students were stressed because of financial worries. And among the top worries of college students was fear for their future careers. Unpaid summer internships, and the increased pressure to find one, in no way help the mental health of already over-stressed college students.
Yet, even as I write this, I’m preparing applications for summer internships. Even though I recognize how problematic this summer internship craze has become, it won’t stop me from playing the game. Our willingness to play continues the cycle, but in order to compete in this dismal job market, it feels like there’s no other choice.