The Rough-and-Tumble World of College Student Internships

I’m re-reading Wendy Mogel’s “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” and thinking about the value of rejection and denial as my college student kids try to get summer internships.  Maybe I over-protected them for 19 years and “enabled” them – helping them accomplish every goal they’ve set in both academics and athletics.  Now they’re venturing into the working world, having to apply, pursue, and interview for jobs on their own. I want them to reach into their reserves of determination and assertiveness, and show me that they have the initiative and motivation to scramble and get an interview.  

They both have peers at college who are receiving zero guidance from parents and yet have secured summer jobs in interesting fields. So I’m pulling back, concerned that as long as I guide them through every step, they’ll never acquire the skill to do it themselves.  The other day I said to my son, “Buddy, this is the School of Hard Knocks, and you’re enrolled!”  I’ve switched from lovingly putting on life jackets to throwing them into the job market yelling, “Sink or Swim!” 

My mom picked potatoes in Idaho.  She was a telephone operator.  Yes, she graduated from college, but she always knew she had to work, and she told us from the beginning that we had to have a “marketable skill” to earn a living.  As a kid growing up in Washington State, I picked blueberries, green beans, apples and peaches in the summers.  One summer my mom started a strawberry picking company and we would all pile in a truck and go to the strawberry fields.  At the end of the summer we each got a $5 bonus. My brother, sister and I tell stories of working together one summer at Ray’s Spudnut shop that make everyone laugh.  I think we make it sound like it was more fun than it was.

When my son finished 9^th grade, I volunteered him as a counselor’s assistant in our school’s 6 week summer program.  He said, “You farmed me out!”  I said, “That’s right.”  In the end he liked it a lot – and worked there for pay the following 2 summers.  He is now a sophomore in college and has applied for 7 internships in New York, and has already been “denied” for 4 of them.  These are very competitive, highly sought-after internships that probably go to rising seniors more often than rising juniors as he is.  I know he has learned that he should have started this process earlier, and sent out more resumes than he did.  Still - how much of a “blessing” are these doggoned skinned knees? How much rejection can he absorb before he becomes totally discouraged? How long can I watch from the sidelines before I step back into the process?

I’m now thinking that a summer welding at our family’s chair factory in Hanover, PA might be the “blessing” he needs.  I’ll farm him out.