Over the summer, I spent each day doing nothing. More precisely, I was one of those people who spent their vacation doing the somewhat pointless work others refuse to do: fetching coffee, punching in data, making phone calls, leading third graders to the bathroom.
The jobs were tedious, the commute was long and unpredictable, and the lunches in Queens were surprisingly expensive. I found myself doing countless menial office tasks like mindlessly inputting complaints in a computer or handing out flyers in the sweltering heat.
There are so many other ways to spend a summer vacation, but with Stuyvesant students, summer never starts. Most don’t spend their precious two months away from school relaxing or having fun. Instead, they find ways to impress colleges with more hard work.
In our Stuy careers, every single thing we participate in is done for one purpose and one purpose only: to look good on a college application.
Everyone wants to get into a pre-college program at a prestigious institution, but why doesn’t working in a library look good? Why isn’t working in an office, tutoring program, or a library just as good as studying at Harvard? In fact, neither is explicitly better than the other. A college program educates a student academically, while a job—yes, even a miserable job like mine—gives a person practical skills and the ability to tolerate adverse working conditions.
I won’t deny that I hated my unpaid internship a lot, but I learned things that cannot be learned in a college-level class. There are those who spend their summer sitting in a classroom every day and learn nothing, and there are those who spend their summer throwing themselves out there and learning about life. My job may have been physically unrewarding, and at times, I wanted to shoot myself, but it was ultimately fulfilling.
I learned how an office environment worked. I made some friends. I met some politicians. I did my share of community service and volunteer work, and for once, I felt proud of myself. A summer class could never do that. Besides, an internship is relatively easy on the wallet.
