I Still Don't Care About Your Interview

Yesterday I posted this Yik Yak, mostly in jest:

            What I’ve come to realize is that it’s more relevant than I possibly could have imagined.  I’m applying to internships too.  We all are.  Every day one of my friends shows up to the dining hall in a suit with a story.  “They asked me this.”  “I emailed them that.”  “They’re flying me to New York on Friday.”  Who cares?  Apparently everyone.  Here’s why I don’t.

            I’m turning 21 in two months.  A few months later I’ll start what is hopefully my last year of schooling for the foreseeable future.  Every day I get emails with job postings and networking events.  I read every single one and each sounds worse than the last.  The question I keep asking myself is why should I go sit behind a computer all summer?  Don’t get me wrong; I fully comprehend the notion of paying your dues.  At some point, apparently, there comes a time when real life begins.

            But, what is this real life that I keep hearing about? I’m tired of hearing about signing bonuses, and enormous salaries, and long hours.  Everyone I know is working so hard, all to be able to afford a small apartment and a $20 drink on Saturday night.  It’s not the rigor of the work, however, that bothers me; it’s the scope.

            We don’t go to a top-20 university anymore, at least not according to the latest survey, but none of that even really matters.  No one ended up at Emory by accident.  We’ve all put in grueling hours studying, volunteering, you name it, while trying to balance a social life that theoretically makes it all worth while.  Emory is full of brilliant, motivated people—people capable of changing the world we live in for the better.

            Yet, no one I meet wants to be a teacher, or a fireman, or a public defender.  All anyone seems to want is the biggest paycheck they can get their hands on, and that’s truly depressing.  I honestly believe that we are the people who have the capabilities to shape the future.  We are the people who could reform education and healthcare.  We are the people who could rebuild America’s many broken cities.  But, we won’t.

            Instead, we’ll move to New York.  We’ll play with massive bank accounts.  We might even cause the next big economic collapse.  Who knows?  So, no, I still don’t care about your interview with Goldman Sachs.  I wish you all the best, but I know you don’t care.  The more I think about it, the less I want to be a part of this “business world” I hear so much about.  I want to do something good for this world, because I know I can, and I hope everyone reading this does too.

I Work At Camp

I’m sitting on a cot, in a cabin, in the middle of the woods. I haven’t felt air conditioning in weeks, and haven’t had a proper shower in longer. No, I didn’t get an internship this summer; I didn’t even try. As much as the Goizueta Business School and many of my peers insisted that a taste of the “business world” was the obvious next step in my young life, I decided to return to a place that makes me happier than any other in the world. So here I am, in Wayne, Maine, spending my summer at Camp Androscoggin.

While many of my friends are wasting away in cubicles (albeit reeling in a lot more cash than I am working this 24/7 job), I’m coaching basketball and living with a bunk of eleven-year-olds. There is certainly something to be said about young adults pursuing their dreams, but I think the notion of an internship has polluted the way college students approach their future. In many cases, it seems as if students see internships as a way to discover their ambitions, as opposed to realizing their ambitions through those jobs.

At Emory, the pre-professional culture is overwhelming. The pressure to go pre-med, or join the Business School draws a huge chunk of the student body away from the liberal arts. After one semester at Goizueta, many of my classmates have bought in to the standard mantra that sophomore-internship = junior-internship = job-offer. They believe this because it’s true; if you go through the motions, graduate with decent grades, and apply for enough positions, chances are you’ll end up with a job out of college. In this economy, it really is difficult to argue with that equation.

This brings me back to camp. The reason I enjoy this job so much goes past my love of basketball and the summer weather in Maine. Androscoggin’s motto is “help the other fellow.” Here, we preach selflessness—acting for the benefit of the group rather than that of the individual. The counselors certainly don’t come back every year for the money; we come back for the community. This is the only place I’ve worked where success is measured not by what you’ve achieved for yourself, but rather, what you’ve helped others achieve.

The effect that camp can have on kids is sometimes astounding. The counselors here truly act as role models for the children that we look after all summer. Only a few people know that it was my former counselor’s blog that inspired me to start Student Parking Only. If he got an internship after his sophomore year at Duke instead of coming back to Andro, I might have never sat down to write that first fateful post.

Call it immaturity. Call it ignorance. Call it whatever you want. I don’t need an internship. I don’t even want one. Right now, I’m just trying to do my part to make the world a better place. For the kids here, I’m doing just that. Camp values all the virtues that an investment bank ignores. When you look at my resume, it reads camp counselor, but there’s something about this job that one line cannot really articulate. There isn’t anyplace I’d rather be.