WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT INTERNSHIPS
Our culture heavily promotes utilizing summer internships. What are the truths and benefits behind internships? Are internships worth your summer?
Summer was formerly a magical time. As children, we dreamed of summer days filled with sleeping in, homework-less nights, and family vacations. I remember the anticipation that filled my soul as my classmates and I anxiously awaited that final bell to sound. Yet, now in young adulthood, we have quickly replaced these juvenile summer dreams with time-consuming ventures called internships. As a college student, your time is valuable and during your college years, there is no more strategic of a time than your summer breaks. We have taken this valuable asset (that could be well spent on fun, family, or missions) and we have swiftly given it over to furthering our careers with internships. I am not saying that all internships are bad, but if we have forfeited other great possibilities, then what we gain from an internship instead must be worth it, right? In these following paragraphs we will attempt to look at a culture that heavily promotes utilizing summer internships and discover the truth and benefits behind its actual value.
Are Internships Beneficial?
Studies show that 70% of employers offer former interns full-time positions following their time spent with the company [1]. Graduates with internship experience are paid on average 9 to 13% more than their peers who had no experience [2]. This means that with internship experience, you will likely get paid more and will find it easier to land a full-time position. However beneficial an internship is, choosing to refrain from getting one doesn’t mean that you will be jobless and living in your parent's basement post-graduation. There’s only a 16% increase in job offers for those who had internships over those who didn’t [3]. Summer internships are without a doubt extremely beneficial in career development, but having a successful career (or even a comfortable one) is not solely dependent on having an internship.
In our generation, there is an obvious expectation for young adults to climb the ladder of career achievements. Recently, I was chatting with a college student and I asked him a simple question, "How many voices do you have in your life encouraging you to take an internship this summer?” He quickly responded with a laundry list of people, "My friends, my mom, multiple of my professors..." Influential people in his life!
After his list seemed to arrive at the finish line, I asked him a follow-up question, "How many voices in your life are encouraging you to pursue an opportunity that will mainly focus on your faith this summer?" This question was met with a long pause. This student definitely had people in his life pushing him to be faithful in his relationship with Jesus; however, it's clear where he felt led to go.
He could point out obvious indicators that those around him valued internships yet, indicators promoting missions or ministry were scarce. I'm afraid that many young Christians are feeling this same pressure.
Since 2013, at least 60% of each graduating class did an internship or a co-op [4]. However, a recent study that analyzed 360,000 college graduates found that there's a 38% chance that you will have a career that is outside of your degree [5]. That’s a 73% chance that your career path will not relate to your college major at all [5]!
Overall, this means that an internship may not be as helpful as we thought. Combining this reality with the fact that 53% of college graduates leave their job within the first year makes me fearful [6]. Fearful that our future leaders in the church and our society are quickly climbing a ladder that we will soon abandon altogether.
Ministry vs Internships
When deciding how to spend our summer break, it can be far too easy to view ministry and our future career as standing in opposition to each other. The truth is, God’s will for your life is likely not at war with your career. On the contrary, God may be aligning your skills and his desires to walk hand-in-hand in order to leverage your career path to make God famous.
The sovereign God of the universe could use your career to strategically place you in positions to proclaim his name and share his unmatched love with the lost world! Honorable and God-glorifying work often earns you a platform to speak, and with that platform, we can proclaim Christ. While an internship could be the most strategic option, we must also be willing to admit that maybe it isn’t. Sometimes, God may want us to lay down building up our future career altogether to do something different for his Kingdom.
Maybe instead of an internship, you need to give your summer to focus on your relationship with Jesus; that could be exactly what you need to grow. The natural disposition for most college students is to analyze what they might lose if they were to refrain from doing an internship. Yet, we can’t forget about the incredible opportunities we may forfeit by participating in one. The cost of following Christ is that you will lose things:
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it. For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself?’” (Luke 9:24-25).
What we do with our summers or lives may not receive approval from others or gain “the whole world,” but gaining Christ is worth it, no matter the cost. So, we must be strategic with our summers. Your time in college has the power to set you on a specific trajectory for the rest of your life. Many options could be very strategic for you to consider doing over the summer.
Go for a Summer!
One avenue is that most college ministries have excellent summer projects that are designed to equip and send you out on a lifetime of mission. Now, a summer project isn’t guaranteed to radically change your life, but spending multiple weeks with Jesus as your sole focus with a community that is doing the same typically has radical effects.
Another avenue to join God this summer is to go overseas on a short-term mission trip. There are 3.28 billion people in the world today that will likely never meet a Christian, read a bible, or hear the true gospel [7]. Whether it would be one week, one month, or the entire summer—join God in revealing his amazing grace to those who have yet to hear it.
At the end of the day, when all the research is finished and both perspectives have been considered, the question we must ask ourselves is not: will an internship be the most beneficial option for me? Instead, the question we must pose to ourselves is: will an internship be the most faithful thing to God?
We all would love a holy equation that could magically calculate our next step or that God would send a divine being who would descend from the heavens to direct us on our way. Luckily God, in his divine nature, often chooses not to intervene in such a way. I say luckily because amid these massive life decisions, we don't always find an answer. Instead, we find something (or someone) much better: Jesus. If God answered our most crucial life decisions in a magic eight-ball fashion, he would rob us of experiencing the wonderful dependency that we often find as we navigate the treacherous roads of life with him as our guide.
I cannot confidently say that taking an internship is the right or wrong path for you; however, I can speak with the utmost confidence in Matthew 28:19:
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
God has called each of us as believers to join him in making disciples among all nations. There are many marvelous ways in which we can do this. That summer internship shouldn’t solely be about your career, it should be about your heart and God’s mission. We must wrestle with our hearts and seek our Lord as we make all decisions—including how we invest our summers.
Reflect
If you’ve made it to this point of the article, take some more time to reflect. There’s a high chance that you have already processed how an internship could benefit your career, but your life is much more than your career. I would like to give you a few practical questions to walk through as you process how to utilize your summer:
If I do an internship, who am I doing it for: myself, my family, peers, or God (Galatians 1:10)?
If I do an internship, how will it benefit me spiritually?
What will I miss out on (or lose) if I do an internship? Is that worth it?
What alternatives are there to do this summer instead of an internship?
By Gunnar B.
Gunnar has served The Traveling Team as one of our travelers since Fall 2020. He is a graduate from the University of Central Arkansas where the Lord captivated his heart for the nations. His heart is to see college students mobilized towards taking the story of Jesus all over the globe.
[1] “70% of employers offer former interns full-time positions following their time spent with the company”
https://career.ufl.edu/gain-experience/internships/
https://career.ucsd.edu/employers-recruiters/policies/
[2] “Graduates with internship experience are paid on average 9 to 13% more than their peers who had no experience."
https://comparecamp.com/internship-statistics/
https://www.zippia.com/advice/internship-statistics/
[3] There’s only a 16% increase in job offers for those who had internships over those who didn’t.
[4] Since 2013, at least 60% of each graduating class had an internship or co-op.
https://www.internships.com/career-advice/basics/internships-by-the-numbers
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/when-to-apply-for-internships
[5] 360,000 college graduates found that there's a 38% chance that you will land in a career that is outside of your degree and a 73% chance that your career path will not relate to your college major at all.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr587.pdf
[6] 53% of college graduates leave their job within the first year
[7] 3.28 B unreached www.thetravelingteam.org/stats
All verse translations are CSB
