The Internship Dilemma

You are fresh out of high school, seeking to finally pursue what you want at the tertiary level. But you'll also need to seek a promising college to hopefully get a diploma, degree, or just a certificate that will enable you to do what you want.

You found a certain college. You look through the website, the brochure, listening to their consultant. It's prestigious, it has guarantees, it produces employable graduates. The feedback from this college was to succintly put: Awesome.

So you browse through their course structure, you observed, weighing your pros and cons, mainly finance, transport, hostel availabilities. And then you came across this very thing that ensures you a secure job in the future, hopefully. Yes, the word Internship.

All you need to do is be attached to a company (prestigious or not, up to your judgment, and your results. Frankly, just your results). Complete three to six months' worth of work with measly income, lots of determination, and a hell lot of stress.

You would also attend a briefing whereby your course tutor, lecturers all dish out examples of really exceptional students, and also really "exceptional" students so that hopefully this batch of students will not make the same mistake. And they have all told you the same thing, "If you have any problems, try solving it yourself, before you come to us. We'll try to help in anyway,"

At this point you could also be required to constantly report to your supervisor in university. Work out your way to the workplace, bus, taxi, train, car. Buy more office-looking clothes so that you look like the professional you intend to be in the coming years.

But Life is not that bed of roses. You soon discover that the promises given by this prestigious college was nothing more than empty talk. When you complain, they could choose to ignore your pleas for help. To their defence, your pleas for help is not really help but "complaint". And to their defence, "We do not serve complaints. This is your own world. Try to survive. We are just a platform to the real world,"

In other words, you have to go through an internship programme, endure that three to six months of stress, hell and crap, and you can't complain to anyone except to your immediate family, friends, or anybody willing to listen to you. Just not your boss though.

There's one thing the university wants from you: Your grades, that signifying results that will determine whether does your college still have the audacity to call themselves prestigious. Quite simply, you determined your college's future.

Such a dilemma. And you wonder, why do you enrol in this college in the first place when all they want is your glory but not your pain.

Ponder yourself.