What To Do If You Don’t Get That Coveted Summer Internship :(
By: Hanna Alwine, Staff Writer
We are in a strange, strange season of our lives. Sometimes it is warm outside, 65, 70, 75 degrees! Sometimes it snows… Sometimes the sky is really blue. Other times it is that Ohio slate gray. But no matter the weather, it is internship season, and every day is another deadline passed, another cover letter left unwritten, another resume sent off into the ether, never to see the light of day.
If you, too, are struck suddenly by this season’s internship blues, I’d like to fill your head with some other options, options that you may not have considered outside of your lofty pre-professional unpaid corporate 8-week summer internship aspirations.
Scenario Number 1: You get a minimum wage job at a coffee shop back home!
Summer jobs are not about glory. They are about making money. And yes, the regulars that yell at you about the amount of almond milk in their latte are annoying, but what other choice do you have? Besides, you like making coffee, and working there comes with free caffeine.
You spend your days grinding beans, pouring espresso, stealing cake-pops from the display case and downing them in the back room. One day while on your 15, you get an email in your inbox. It’s from Fran Lebowitz, resident surly New Yorker, smoker, writer-who-no-longer-writes, curmudgeon, Martin Scorsese muse, and all-around-personality.
She starts the email complaining about how much she hates email (oh Fran!) but she has heard that you are looking for something to do this summer that isn’t slinging beans and she has decided to grace your inbox with an offer. How would you like, she says, to come work for her over the summer?
The workload? Not much, just accompanying her around the city, sitting in her rent controlled apartment reading books and staring at the ceiling, eating grapes, sipping on cheap booze and chain-smoking cigarettes. It’s a dream come true. With shaking, espresso-stained fingertips, you hit reply and begin to type out a response.
Scenario Number 2: You apply to be a Summer Housing Assistant!
Oberlin, Ohio gets a bad rap for its intense winter colds. But this cold is not a problem in the summer months! Yes, it’s true that there will be very few other people on campus. Yes, instead of cold there are clouds of mosquitoes and sweltering heat. Yes, there is little to do but look out over seas and seas of corn.
But in your struggle you are getting to know the terrain! You are becoming a true Ohioan! Soon you will be making buck-eyes every Christmas and cheering for the Browns as they lose their next game! And when you are asked what inspires your art — you can point towards this experience, drawing from the pain of being constantly sticky and alone.
Besides, you are not really alone. You have started up a regular email correspondence with Fran Lebowitz, resident surly New Yorker, smoker, writer-who-no-longer-writes, curmudgeon, Martin Scorsese muse, and all-around-personality. Despite the stretches of cyberspace, you are starting to get close. It was difficult to become friends at first, she was really grumpy and really didn’t want to talk to you. But these past couple weeks she’s been opening up, about her childhood, her life in New York, her secret love of TikTok which she only opens on a incognito browser on her burner phone because she’s terrified of being outed for her internet use, infamous luddite as she is. Her grump has turned charming. Are you… falling in love?
Scenario Number 3: Learn a new skill! You’ve always wanted to juggle. Now’s the time!
The summer is coming to a close. You and Fran are spending every moment together. You have shown her the joy of doomscrolling with a close friend. Sitting side by side sunk into matching armchairs, your thumbs twitch over your phone screens for hours at a time. Every so often, she leans over and shows you a video — this one is two bears sharing a watermelon in a meadow. That’s so us, she says.
Scenario Number 4: Take a road trip!
Fran Lebowitz is dying. It has come on suddenly now in these last few weeks of August. You don’t quite know what to do with yourself. You are devastated. School starts up in a couple of weeks, but that’s not what’s on your mind. Instead, you are thinking about Fran. One evening, she calls you to her bedside, places her wrinkled hand on your forehead and says in a shaky voice, I’d like you to write my life story. Fran has not written in sixty years and you have just been handed the rights to her life.
Scenario Number 5: Take some time to relax! After this tough semester you deserve some self care!
It’s been almost a year since Fran passed. You’ve dropped out of school to write her memoir. She wrote you into her will when she passed. You now own her rent controlled apartment and all of her books. She has left you enough money to fund a somewhat extravagant lifestyle (there is a weekly Brie in your fridge and you can get a $5 latte twice a week.) The proceeds of the book, which is now widely anticipated and (already!) critically acclaimed, promise to fund your early retirement.
You sit down at your desk and look out over the bustling New York City street so many stories below. Pen in hand, block of Brie just a few inches away, a framed photo of Fran looks on from the corner of your desk. You hope she would be proud.
