Will work for absolutely nothing

Students are being taken advantage of in an unexpected and underestimated way, and that is through the inherently unfair process of unpaid internships. Sure, internships are not an entirely new invention, but the pressures placed on undergraduates to secure one, and the interminable emphasis on doing so (FIND ONE OR YOU MIGHT AS WELL DIE), certainly weren't a part of my parent's generation. The good news is a lot of people recognize this fact and offer me pitying glances when I talk about paying back student loans while interning for no pay. The bad news? Nothing will ever be done about it, because there will always be privileged students who are able to work for free, and parents who will support them. I am one of the lucky ones, I've been able to live at home, but I've also had to earn my own money as I go. I recently finished my second internship, and I can't lie. I'm a little bitter.

Part of the blame, I suppose, is on myself for being overly ambitious and naive, thinking it would be a smart idea to pursue a career in publishing. These unpaid "internships" are more popular in some professions than others, and in mine, it's almost impossible to find something that pays. The few that do are so highly sought-after that thousands of students apply for only a handful of positions. But apparently, in a world inconceivable to my liberal-arts brain, a world inhabited by mathletes and science-fair winners, students actually get paid for the work that they do, and get meaningful experience at the same time. Oh, to be an engineer.

I am loath to sound like the "entitled interns" that Gawker so readily makes fun of, but I think an oft-forgotten point must be made about unpaid internships. Working for free is one thing, but in many cases, students end up paying through the nose for an internship because the workplace requires you get credit for it. Many schools waive a tuition charge for summer credits. Syracuse, God bless it, does not. Allow me to explain.

Over the summer, I interned a measly two days a week at a snoozefest interior design magazine. My supervisor there absolutely demanded that I get course credit for the internship, because otherwise, I would be completing work without any "compensation."

Oh, really, is that right? Well, if I get credit, I must pay tuition. Nevermind that I didn't need the credit at all, as I was about to take a semester off because I had extra credits. To review: I am paying money in order to be given the honor of completing more unpaid work. I chose the cheapest route and took the internship for one credit, which cost $900. Add to that about $400 in transportation costs, not including the special events and shoots I went to. This fall, I worked three days a week at a city magazine, and averaged about $50/week in transportation costs (this time I fortunately was not subject to any credit requirements). I am eternally grateful for public transport; I am sure I would have averaged much more between gas and parking had I been driving. But $50 is a lot of money for a poor student, and I wish internship supervisors, as well as college internship offices, would keep this in mind, especially if they are expecting students to pay for course credits.

I understand that people want to make sure students are committed, and that those students need to prove themselves in a professional environment before anyone wants to hire them. But after a while, I couldn't help but feel a little degraded when I continued to scrape pennies together to go to work in a place where, some days (particularly over the summer), no one acknowledged my presence. A "thank you for coming" every now and then would have been nice, as I sat in my threadbare clothing, hunched over whichever frozen lunch entree was on sale that week. Or, what about the times I wrote an article that the magazine ordinarily would have paid a freelancer to write? But because I, the intern, wrote it, they can rest easy and save some cash. At one point, I seriously thought about forwarding my tuition bill to the magazine's parent company just to see what sort of response I would get. Forgive me everyone, but sometimes it was a challenge to gear myself up to be a motivated, self-starting intern when I was worried about whether I could make enough money at my job during the other four days to pay my loans, bills, and oh yeah, the train fare to get my pathetic intern self to the office.

The reason this stings so badly for me is because, after all of that obnoxiousness, and skipping family vacations, and working seven days a week for months on end, a career in publishing isn't even what I want anymore! I worked hard, and I did good work. So what return do I get on the investment of all of that time? A few lines on my resume, a recommendation from a supervisor? Should I be grateful for the honor of just being given the opportunity, even if it deterred me from a career and set my life askew? Even if I did want to work in magazines, the industry is pretty much going up in flames, so where would I work? How many more of these unpaid internships am I going to have to complete before I am "qualified" enough to get paid?

I think we need a government bailout-- to all of the college-educated, unpaid interns past and present, for anyone who schlepped themselves to and fro, hoping it would pay off some day, only to find out their industry, their dreams, or both, had shattered somewhere along the way. I promise to make like GM and restructure my life, think about how to be greener, the whole nine.... but I cannot promise a pay cut. What's less than zero?