interns unite!

It's getting closer to the summer and every diligent college student knows that means its time for internship searches. And there are a lot of them out there too! Every business seems to make room for a student to do busy work for no pay.

Hmm I wonder why...

Is it just me or is the use of unpaid internships turning into an abuse of uncertain college students?

Here are the facts. Internships have been around for a long time in certain fields like journalism and medicine. It makes sense to put someone onto the floor as a worker-in-practice if their job requires knowledge that can't be attained anywhere other than in the workplace. Before there were interns there were apprentices (a point that a friend reminded me of). In the days when a cobbler wasn't just a delicious pastry it also made sense to take someone under your wing and teach them a trade that couldn't be picked up through general schooling. I might also mention that apprentices usually got to live under the roof of their teacher. But I do grant that internships have their place in society.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. The majority of jobs require only a few things: computer skills; common sense; and the ability to read, write and think at a respectable level. Now i could swear that I had already picked up all of these skills in my 15 years of attending school. So why am I still being offered an internship to move numbers from one computer chart to another for no money?

The way I see it the employers have gotten savvy to the fact that college students are a bunch of insecure, uncertain over-achievers who are willing to do anything to add a couple of words to their resume. What I want to know is where will it stop? Will we eventually be asked to intern for a minimum of 3 years to get credit for it? or maybe you will have to attend a paid training seminar to be considered for an internship? Both of those things might sound crazy but I certainly know a few people who would do it.

This kind of backwards progress is what marked the early stages of capitalism with unfair wages and a complete lack of security on the part of the worker. That is, until the concept of a Union was conceived!

So I suggest we interns unite under a union that guarantees us what we so sorely deserve and so infrequently receive: real job training, a stipend large enough to at least cover transportation and a nice lunch on days we work and some assurance that if we do well we can move up the ranks of the company we devoted so much time to.

Until college students start to band together on issues of importance to us we will always be used. What are we working so hard for - memorizing mathematical theorems and painstakingly pouring over passages of literature - if the end result is being denigrated to office barista while the guys in the corner office laugh it up over our carefully brewed Caffe Americano.