The Internship Process Is Exhausting

For many college students, an internship is a vital part to their education and resume. I get it, having experience in the field before you graduate is a great advantage. Can we spend some time talking about how exhausting the internship process is? 

Personally, I’ve been working on finding a spring internship since October. In that time I’ve been sending out applications, writing cover letters and trying to find more internships to apply to. In my opinion, it’s exhausting. 

I have put in all this work for an opportunity that I might not even get. As of right now, I have no internship plans for the spring. I could end up not having a spring internship and the months of hard work wouldn’t have amounted to anything. 

No step of the internship application process is easy. First, you have to draft a resume and make it exceptional. Then, you go to a career advisor and they provide you with advice on what to fix. Then the process starts all over again. 

Once you have your resume completed, you need to draft a cover letter. 

Cover letters are tricky because they differ for each business you apply to and there are many ways you can craft them. Some people say it should be about your experience, while some think it should be narrative driven to capture the recruiter’s interest. 

Once you choose a direction for your cover letter, you actually begin applying to internships. Before you apply, you have to search for internships. For me, this process of researching took so much time. I was scrolling through emails, job sites, google searches and emailing random places to see if there were any opportunities available. Once I made a list of 15 or so places, I started the application process.

Since applications are usually online, they are fairly easy to navigate. Keeping track of all the materials is hard. Some places want a resume, while others want a writing sample or three references. Just thinking about it all makes my head spin. If I didn’t have a planner, I wouldn’t be able to remember all the details about each application. 

Deadlines are another frustrating part about internships. Some places want their spring interns by December, some won’t post an application till January and others require you to reach out. 

There’s no uniformity on deadlines.  

This bothers me because I like to plan things out ahead of time. I was expecting to know if I had an internship by Christmas time, but here I am still applying to places being seriously concerned that I’m not going to get an internship. 

The pandemic doesn’t make it any easier because the amount of places that want interns is significantly less. Of those places, they might be taking on less interns than usual which equals less opportunities. Since money is also short for many businesses, they may be resorting to unpaid internships in order to save money. 

Once you submit those applications, it’s a waiting game. That means weeks of no replies, follow-up emails and interviews. While all that is going on you see other students getting internships. You think, “why can’t I get one? Am I even good enough to intern?”

There’s a lot of self doubt, that’s for sure. 

By the time spring internships begin, it’ll be summer internship research time. Basically, I’m saying it’s a tedious, never-ending cycle just to land an internship. 

Happy searching collegettes.

• career
• internships