Students can make valuable summer plans without pursuing internships.
Courtesy | Wikimedia Commons

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a prolific writer who provided a critical yet empathetic perspective on the world after serving in World War II, serving in close proximity to death, and subsequently having to evaluate what is truly important. He posed this question to college students in a commencement speech in 1974. 

I read that quote while sitting in the library stressing over yet another move back home for the summer. I felt an immediate reassurance in my original summer plan to go home and work summer camps — a plan that had, lately, induced nothing but anxiety because they didn’t include the word “internship.”

The quote was a reminder that there are good things outside of a strict, resume-driven path encouraged by professors and career coaches. It’s a reminder every college student needs. College students should not feel the pressure to take on an internship every summer, especially if they are actively living lives in the summer months that will allow them to become better, healthier, and more learned individuals. 

To understand why it’s OK not to have an internship, it is important to define the merits of an internship in the first place. Internships allow students to get experience working in a particular field to test out what they might want to do after they graduate. It also allows students to apply the skills they have learned in the classroom to the real world. 

It also allows students to discern what they want from life and develop the skills and connections that are necessary to get it. 

But internships are not the only — or even the best — way to build these skills. That can come from a wide range of life experiences, not only found in an office space or on the job. Employers want experienced employees who are capable, confident, and convicted. These are skills that can often be better developed by working in a restaurant during the summer than through an internship that someone feels forced into taking. 

A worthwhile summer can also have nothing to do overtly with career pursuits. Vonnegut lays it out clearly: the best, most noble pursuits often align more with relationships and people than resumes and professional goals. 

I applied for three internships in the summer, all of which let me know at varying levels of courtesy and kindness that I was too young. I took it as a sign that this summer, I was supposed to do something different. Working summer camps and assistant-directing the show for my community theater company both fell into my lap. 

Working with these kids, pouring into the community that shaped me, and collaborating with some of my greatest mentors will improve my ability to serve as a leader, a team player, and as a person. Even more so, I have seen the way young adults in a community theater company influence and encourage kids because I was one of them.

Nevertheless, every time I tell someone about my summer plans, I feel the need to apologize for it, explaining that I am well aware of how valuable my time is and fully convinced that this is the best use of it. Using the word “internship” in association with my summer plans seems to do all of the justifying and explaining for me. It’s an annoying truth, but it shouldn’t scare a student into not pursuing or rejecting the unique opportunities that come his way. 

Internship is a pretentious word anyway. The Latin word for internship, “internus” means “internal” or a turning inward. It implies a kind of self-focus as opposed to the typical understanding of a job as a service and an external endeavor. Even aside from the implications of the etymology, an internship is just a fancy word for a temporary job. It’s an arrogant way some people distinguish themselves from those that simply respond to questions about their summer plans with, “Oh, I’m working.” 

It’s not bad to intern during the summer. But for the college student who is going back home to read books they haven’t had time to get to, pour back into old communities from high school or childhood, or work at the ice cream shop, he or she must know that is good too. 

Cultivating an identity and a community that strives to foster enthusiasm, promote relationships, and, ultimately, eliminate loneliness through the means that are distinctive to each person ought to be recognized as the noble and daring work that it is. There are certainly bad ways to spend a summer, but there are so many more good ones than simply getting an internship.

Jillian Parks is a junior studying Rhetoric and Media Studies and Journalism.