The Late Bloomers: Mourning The Summer Internship
A fiction story about Benny and LouLou — two summer interns — and the nostalgic, shared experience that intertwines them.
By Ila Kumar
Published
Everything Your Mother Doesn't Know is a monthly meditation on growing up. Stories in this column speak to the way adolescence, despite its ephemeral nature, is full of enduring/interesting lessons.
At my age, there’s life, and then there’s summer. When the nine-month-long cycle of papers and coming home for dinner ends, it’s time to bliss out on sunshine, waffle cones, and images of lighthouses in the distance. Summer is supposed to be life-changing but carefree, relaxing, yet fulfilling. And like most components of adolescence, it’s about expectations. Ira Glass—vocally averse to the season—once described summer on his radio show as “a three-month long prom date where you are supposed to have a good time, but no one ever does.” I’m nineteen now. Reliable structures like summer camp and obligatory family vacations are over; summer extends before me like a slow, stretchy question mark. Landing an internship is a big part of that.
They had written so many applications and exaggerated in so many ways to get these internships that the deceptions and embellishments regarding their outward presentations to the world felt normal, even encouraged. It changed their insides, too. They weren’t just lying to others. They were lying to themselves.
That was one part of the internship’s paradoxical nature. The position represents a “curious blend of privilege and exploitation,” as Ross Perlin describes in Intern Nation. Even now, internships are paid poorly, or labor is exchanged for college credit. The work is menial, but that’s not the point. As Perlin writes, an internship “sends out a more targeted social signal than ‘temp’ or ‘freelancer.’” Internships are just one of many forms of nonstandard labor practiced in this country, but unlike other jobs, they are “a status hopefully vaulted over as rapidly as possible.” Internships are not just the ability to afford to work for nothing, it’s the privilege of impermanence and time—room to change.