Serial intern (a What Next Story)

The Post-Amherst Afterlife (And I Promise You, There is One)

Looking at my resume, it seems hard to believe I’ve been out of college for only two years. In that short time, I’ve lived in 7 different places, taken on 8 different internships and part-time jobs, and completed one massage therapy program. And spent my entire life savings (oops).

At Amherst, I was a biology major, and I thought I had my career path all figured out. It would be nice and linear: I would go on to grad school and become a research scientist. Up through junior year, this plan was going like clockwork. I was by no means brilliant, but I had a solid record, and if I had gone on to do a thesis I would have been in a good position to get into a good grad program.

First, I realized that I didn’t actually like research. I didn’t like the hassle of having to schedule my days around the timetable of the lab, and I didn’t like the stressful uncertainty of the work. It just wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. Second, I realized that what I was most interested in were topics at the intersection of science with other disciplines, such as bioethics and research policy.

After much wrangling, I decided not to do a thesis, and not to apply to grad school. Instead I took a few more classes relating to the intersection of my interests—and felt totally at a loss as to how to how to make a career out of any of it. Thanks to that great psychological device called Complete and Utter Denial, even two weeks before graduation I had zero prospects for the future, even for the summer. I’d been rejected from the few internships and teaching positions I’d applied for.

In desperation, I asked my parents to check around during their Memorial Day weekend visit to a small vacation town in Maine to see whether any of the local restaurants needed servers for the summer season. It was a long shot considering I didn’t have any experience waiting tables, but I lucked out, and was hired after a short phone interview.

• Note 1: Take chances. Don’t be scared off by not having all the qualifications an employer is looking for. Sometimes confidence and enthusiasm is enough.

• Note 2: Do lots of internet research into potential options. Sites like craigslist, idealist.org, and monster.com are all great resources. If you read about an organization in a newspaper that sounds like it’s doing interesting work, look up the website to see whether they have any positions open.

I ended up pursuing an unpaid social justice internship in San Francisco, at an organization dedicated to preserving audio/visual resources from the civil rights movement. An interesting and rewarding experience, but not directly in line with any potential career goals.

I did not have any part-time job prospects planned out to pay the rent. It took a few weeks of wandering around submitting copies of my résumé, but ultimately I found an opening for a sales position—at the third largest GAP in the world, during Christmas season. There were many other people applying, most of whom had previous retail experience (I had none), and the process involved a group interview (something I’d never done). I did the best I could to make analogies between the skills required for the position with what I’d learned from my experience waiting tables and from being a resident counselor at Amherst, and tried to project enthusiasm. I got the position, which again showed me that having the right attitude can go a long way to make up for lack of experience.

• Note 3: Don’t worry about not having it all planned out ahead of time. It’s much easier to find employment or apartments once you’re on the spot—just be sure to have enough saved to survive while you’re looking.

I was all set to stay in San Francisco for another internship, but at the last minute found that they’d lost their funding, and would be putting off choosing interns for several months. Since I had friends in LA, and had long daydreamed of learning massage therapy, I made a quick move to SoCal and enrolled in a certification program.

Back in the fall, I had applied to a science policy organization in DC. The phone interview had gone horribly, and not surprisingly, I was rejected. But the secretary kindly offered to keep my resume on file.

Five months after the initial interview, I received an email asking whether I was still interested in an internship. In my original cover letter, I had mentioned a paper I’d written on patent rights in genetically-modified seeds for a legal theory course. It turned out the organization was starting a new project called “Science and Intellectual Property in the Public Interest”. Perfect! In fact, even better suited to my interests than the internship spot I’d been rejected for. Indeed, the phone interview turned out to be more of a “when can you start?” than a “why should we take you?” I took a leave of absence from my massage program and headed to DC for the summer.

• Note 4: Be graceful in defeat. Corollary: Be nice to secretaries. Ask people to keep your application on file. Sometimes when people say “we’re choosing from lots of qualified applicants, and it was a tough decision,” they really mean it. [And though I didn’t do it for this particular position, it’s a good idea after you’ve been rejected from somewhere to follow-up and politely ask for suggestions on how to improve your application or interview style to become the kind of candidate they would hire. It makes a good impression on people, and you might learn something helpful].

When I returned to California in the fall to finish my massage program, I had neither housing nor a part-time job settled in advance. I found the former through flyers on a local university campus, and the latter, a barista position at a nearby coffee shop, through Craigslist.

In January, I applied to a project at an international health policy organization that I had learned about through my previous science policy internship. Because the project had already filled its internship positions, my application was transferred to a different department which was engaged in related work—and as I discovered in the phone interview, this caused some interesting miscommunication. After happily establishing that their work and my background would be a good fit, I asked: “So when do I start?”, expecting to hear a date falling sometime in late spring. Instead, they asked, “What? Haven’t you made arrangements to be in Geneva already?”

If I wanted the position, I would have to somehow find and commit to housing and plane tickets in less than three weeks. All the local boarding houses were booked, so I had to scramble to contact everyone I knew, including alums I only knew as acquaintances, who might possibly have contacts in Geneva. I ultimately found the housing I needed through four degrees of separation.

• Note 5: Network creatively. You might be surprised what a small world it can be, and how willing acquaintances can be to help you out. Don’t be afraid to ask—and be sure to offer when you get the chance!

• Note 6: Find a niche. It can lead you in interesting directions, and will make you stand out when applying to prestigious places with competitive application processes. Corollary: Sometimes pursuing an interesting project at a lesser-known organization can be better in the long run than doing something generic at a prestigious organization.

Now my story hits a more prosaic turn. My plan is to head to law school in the fall. I will try to partially subsidize my way through massage therapy, and I will further wrangle about questions such as whether to do policy work for NGOs, aim for a professorship, or sell my soul to a firm.

What I do know is that I’ve learned a lot these past two years.

• Note 7: The biggest lesson is that meandering is okay. You really can pursue personal interests, and experiment with different paths, and still convince potential employers and institutions that you are focused, capable, and reliable. You have to be careful about how you package yourself: on some versions of my résumé, I leave out my massage therapy program, or the most radically political description of my San Francisco internship. But not every experience in your post-graduate life has to be accounted for on a résumé or directly targeted to what you want to do with your life.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that luck was a factor in many of my experiences (and there were a number of other opportunities I was rejected from.)

• Note 8: You can make luck happen. Not on demand, certainly, but luck isn’t a passive force. In Sync, Steven Strogatz writes, “Serendipity is not just an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally, as my dictionary defines it. Serendipitous discoveries are always made by people in a particular frame of mind, people who are focused and alert because they’re searching for something. They just happen to find something else.” Putting in the effort to look actively and creatively will increase the chances that luck will find you.

Many many many people have had to wrangle with doubts, change paths and do things they never expected having to do to get by, and more of your peers are going through the same things you are than you realize. It will be okay. Really. You can do it.