In our first and second years at Bowdoin, my peers in the Class of 2009 had lofty visions of where we could go with our Bowdoin diplomas. At the time, it seemed as if those certificates of higher education would be magic carpets, launching us to professional heights we could only imagine.
Over the rabble and into the offices of major investment banks, consulting firms, ad agencies, and distinguished Ph.D. programs we would fly, miraculously landing, at the age of 21, halfway down the path of a successful professional life.
Certainly, some of my senior comrades have made secure plans for next year, and will propel themselves forward on the career continuum.
Most of us, however, thanks in large part to a less-than-welcoming job market, have been forced to reimagine our post-graduation lives. We've had to revamp the image of ourselves as young, well-tailored corporate workers, or budding scholars, and have started to worship at the altar of a new career path that has come to define this particular generation of graduates:
An unpaid internship and a job waiting tables.
The unpaid internship is No. 105 on stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, and I initially read that about a year ago with some disdain, telling myself that it was absurd for anyone to be expected to work for no pay. Hadn't the good Abe Lincoln outlawed that in the United States some time ago?
But as I've started looking for entry-level jobs, I've come to realize this: The unpaid internship is the entrance. Companies offering entry-level positions specify the need for some experience. How to get experience as an unexperienced person? An internship.
To actually receive a salary or any type of benefits from an employer, you must first spend several months proving your unquestioning dedication to them. "I love this industry and this company enough to work here for free, standing at your beck and call," our cover letters plead.
Some internships shuffle around those pesky legal glitches that require workers to be paid for their labor by dubbing the internships as "college credit only." To me, this seems only a sheer gloss over the cruel cycle at hand: They'll force you to work for free because they know you have no other choice. And you should be grateful, dammit.
To an extent, too, most of us are grateful for the opportunity for some exposure to our chosen fields. What bothers me about the unpaid internship, which has become a fairly standard procedure for career-searching, is not really its lack of monetary compensation. Frustrating though that may be, many of the internships are part-time, and there are certainly ways to have some kind of income on the side.
What bothers me about these unpaid internships is the fact that I can't seem to get one. You might assume that among well-educated young people, unpaid work would be undesirable. But again, it seems that every other senior I talk to is crossing their fingers for a much-sought-after, unpaid internship, and a part-time job with lots of tips.
The competitiveness of many of these internships is understandable; they are, after all, our gateway into the real world, where, presumably, someone will someday deem us worthy of a paycheck.
But that doesn't help the particular sting that comes with a rejection from an unpaid internship.
"We don't think you've earned the right to be in this horribly crummy situation, and aren't sure you've had enough experience with crummy situations to be helpful to us," say the notifications. "We're sorry, but we've received so many applicants who are so well-qualified to make no money, that we're unable to offer you a position at this time. But at least you'll be making the same salary without this internship as you would have been making if you had gotten it."
"I can't even give it away anymore," I grumble to myself, drowning in despair.
As college graduates, we like to tell ourselves that these upcoming years are the most important of our lives, and that in them we will sow the seeds for our future happiness. The idea of spending the next 12 months of our lives hobbling unsteadily between jobs, or relying on low-paying service jobs for sustenance terrifies us and we spend hours piddling around on eBear for a glimmer of hope.
When I sit down to talk with other seniors about this frustrating and intimidating process, most express these same fears. Will work ever come? Why am I getting turned down so much? What was the point of the last four years? How am I going to make this work?
But the truth is that I recall these same anxieties surfacing last year among seniors at this time, and that nearly all those now-alumni are making it work. Even if they're not in a dream situation, they're making ends meet.
So while my tendency is to assume that any job without a paycheck and dental will cause the world around me to crumble, it's important to remember that the year after college is, at the end of the day, just one step in the process. Many years from now, this one year of our lives will feel very small and transitory, and it's likely we'll have set our hearts on a completely different track than the one we have our eyes on now.
And when we look back, we'll be able to say that maybe it was a good thing our magic diplomas didn't drop us too far down the wrong path.