The Internship is Over and Academic Peril is Nigh: A Story of Love and Loss

Three months of All-Hands and Excel have ended and students have made their annual return to the blessings of formal education.

The relationship I’ve cultivated with my bronze medal-winning liberal arts palace lingers somewhere between unabashed pride and gentle resentment. The latter is the less frequent of the two, and mostly just comes up when I feel unequipped with any practical technical skills for the real world. But I’m a public policy major, so perhaps it’s self-inflicted. Classes began on September 26, and despite my best efforts, I’m still bitter that my dream summer is over.

Like most students I know, this summer consisted of brunch with the gals, Narcos and/or Stranger Things (bonus points if you finished both in 72 hours!) and an internship. Upon reflecting on the takeaways from ten weeks spent saturating oneself with new information, the opportunity avails itself to apply many of the lessons learned to the return to school. Even if your actual degree has absolutely nothing to do with the duties you carried out this summer.

The moral of the story is do what you must to achieve homeostasis.

Know thyself and thy work and study habits

On paper, a commitment to an internship is a commitment to an expository block of time each day for fledgling professionals to become skilled in a particular craft, such as spreadsheet management or persuasive human interaction. This focus is, of course, directly applicable to a return to the classroom — success in a subject matter, new or old, demands dedication.

However, a more vital takeaway from the time spent working this summer, whether in a cubicle or in a cafe, is the opportunity to evaluate the environment in which productivity and success feel most natural. Perhaps a vibrant coworking space lends itself to the enthusiastic completion of even your most mundane assignments. Perhaps you’re more like me and you boast the attention span of the below golden retriever and require a slightly cozier version of solitary confinement to buckle down and get work done.

Considering not only where, but when productivity peaks also makes a difference. Earlier, I referred to my resistance to abandon my “dream summer.” My dream summer that relied heavily upon Michael Quigley’s patience and understanding that the gears of innovation don’t start turning for me until around 9:30 every morning.

Similarly, I’ve learned through trial and lots of error that an 8:30 a.m. class in the middle of winter when I evolutionarily should be hibernating probably isn’t the best fit for me. Some students love to be done with class by noon, but I love to make breakfast and read the news (or newsfeed) before getting my work done, ideally heading to class in the afternoon. This leaves as little work as possible for the nighttime and guarantees a less stressful existence for me. I’m Alyssa, I’m an adult and I’m not a morning person. But I’m also no more or less capable as a result of that.

Of course, it never really gets to be all about you to the same extent us spoiled millennials probably hope, right? Working with some discomfort and some compromise is essential to thriving in a challenging setting or on a team, and pushes us to expand our capabilities. It also might open doors to exciting classes or professional opportunities that might work well for you.

But as you think back on your work this summer, consider where and when you felt most productive and why. No one environment is inherently better than the other, and learning to understand and embrace your best workplace situation is critical to your imminent success at school and your future success at work. It’s all about finding your happy medium so that, in my case, I am happy when writing for Medium.

This brings me to my next recommendation.

Think through the interaction between your academic and professional interests

Following a freshman year identity crisis after the realization that medical school probably wasn’t the right fit for me (considering my distaste for science), I took to the Internet to research what other career paths might suit a failure like myself.

Much to my dismay, I learned I was already several months behind my peers in pursuit of Coveted Financial Services Internship and Conventionally Lucrative Career™ and should commit myself to a life conducting research on the intricacies of international policy. As the child of two career government employees, my understanding of the vast and frigid professional waters was laughably limited — if I wasn’t to attend med school or law school, why was I even here?

So back to the drawing board I went to think through my academic and professional aspirations. And I confronted the reality that almost no alignment existed between my real world interests and what I had mapped out for myself as an eager 17-year-old fresh off a remarkable experience shadowing my knee surgeon.

So naturally, I switched to public policy studies with a concentration in international security (which hasn’t technically been approved by any counselors yet but it sounds flowery so I’m sticking with it). If you’re wondering “Alyssa, what does this have to do with working for ProMazo?” the answer is nothing. But the power dynamics between crime syndicates and the state fascinates me so here I am, studying it while working simultaneously in business development and marketing (for which the school has no majors available). And that works for me.

Similar revelations also influence the career paths of interns each summer.

It does feel like somewhat of a crapshoot, determining real-life professional interests and an initial career path based on a high school diploma and a few quarters spent reading Nietzsche and constructing delta-epsilon proofs.

What I’ve observed so often is that the crushing disappointment of reality after a particular role or industry experience, after months or years of preparation and anticipation outside of the classroom, proves wildly incompatible with a student’s personality or priorities. I fault disproportionately high exposure to the firms that can afford a barrage of career fair booths throughout the year — but hey, that’s what we’re working to improve over here at ProMazo.

In particular, liberal arts schools such as mine equip students with a powerful arsenal of critical thinking skills to any number of real-world situations. Identifying what areas are most interesting is an exhaustive process and, without knowing all that exists in the world, it’s difficult to figure out which professional arena best suits each student.

Master your relationship with discomfort

Some humans are able to power through a class, a major or a career that makes them miserable for the time being, likely as a means to a much better end. I am not that human, which is an important cognitive bias to note when deciding whether or not to heed my advice in your own life.

In any case, the ability to sustain and succeed in undesirable conditions is admirable but not mandatory. If you were habitually unhappy or uninterested in your work this summer, it might be time to reconsider what about the role interested you in the first place and where you might be better suited. If habitual unhappiness fits into a larger plan for where you’d like to be in one, five or forty years, perhaps it’s worthwhile to stick around, but only you can gauge the value of doing so.

The same applies to your degree. For freshman Alyssa, the seemingly doable idea of enduring approximately fifteen years of lukewarm-exciting academia as a means to a hopefully powerful and lucrative end as a doctor vanished altogether because I was miserable. My best friend at bronze medal-winning liberal arts palace recently ditched the notorious economics major for similar reasons.

My high school best friend, conversely, who attends gold medal-winning New Jersey palace, has always been capable of rejecting comfort altogether with her end goals in mind (she’s pursuing a major in public and international affairs while also meeting all of the medical school prerequisites. Nerd.). That works well for her, and though I think she might be crazy, I’m thrilled she’s found her balance as I’ve found mine.

With all that in mind, it makes perfect sense that I’ve loved working in a very fast-paced startup environment with relatively clear-cut and enjoyable daily goals that all exist as part of a much broader vision for ProMazo. Working in this summer’s environment has elicited creativity and insight that I had rarely had the opportunity to use, for example, during the school year when I’m feigning interest in planetary rotation so I can graduate.

Though in a vastly different context, I’m learning to apply this creativity in my academic work, both to rationalize the disparity in my major and professional interests and to (hopefully) translate the competency I feel at work to competency I’d like to one day feel in the classroom.

In conclusion

As midterms and papers replace business casual and an irritating commute, think through the relationship between the academic and the professional. The takeaways from a summer spent content marketing are readily applicable to an upswing in the workload for a paper-heavy American history class — you just have to use that hard-earned creativity to figure out how.