Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Millennial parent here. Beyond concerns for my own children, I worry about the wellbeing of this entire generation.
Tuition already casts such a long shadow over childhood. I resist it as much as I can, but at some point, sheer fear takes over when you see how your child is doing relative to everyone else — and you succumb too.
To then watch this escalate into an internship-maxxing culture is harrowing. A young gentleman reached out to me on LinkedIn today, and when I clicked on his profile, I saw internship after internship stacked up. Clearly, he was still trying to secure more meaningful engagements to build what we would call “work experience.”
I honestly shudder. And then at the other end of the spectrum, we working adults are exploring the idea of financial freedom, to accumulate enough so that one day we can reclaim our time. The irony! We spend childhood preparing for the very thing we spend adulthood trying to free ourselves from.
Are these internshipmaxxing people actually 'thriving' though?
While they may feel like they are making progress by gaining more advantages compared to some of their peers, in reality it seems like they are just stuck in the bottom rung of the corporate ladder for an even more prolonged period of time compared to decades ago.
Like running on a treadmill, spending a significant amount of energy and effort, but actually not advancing anywhere further.
Stacking up internship is supposed to make the next step up on the ladder easier, yet it looks like it is just shifting the next rung to an even higher and higher position.
When extended internship becomes more and more normalised, who's to say that workers in the future are not going to be increasingly more disposable?
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Millennial parent here. Beyond concerns for my own children, I worry about the wellbeing of this entire generation.
Tuition already casts such a long shadow over childhood. I resist it as much as I can, but at some point, sheer fear takes over when you see how your child is doing relative to everyone else — and you succumb too.
To then watch this escalate into an internship-maxxing culture is harrowing. A young gentleman reached out to me on LinkedIn today, and when I clicked on his profile, I saw internship after internship stacked up. Clearly, he was still trying to secure more meaningful engagements to build what we would call “work experience.”
I honestly shudder. And then at the other end of the spectrum, we working adults are exploring the idea of financial freedom, to accumulate enough so that one day we can reclaim our time. The irony! We spend childhood preparing for the very thing we spend adulthood trying to free ourselves from.
This is ultimately a good thing. A society under which people cannot thrive ought not to thrive.
Are these internshipmaxxing people actually 'thriving' though?
While they may feel like they are making progress by gaining more advantages compared to some of their peers, in reality it seems like they are just stuck in the bottom rung of the corporate ladder for an even more prolonged period of time compared to decades ago.
Like running on a treadmill, spending a significant amount of energy and effort, but actually not advancing anywhere further.
Stacking up internship is supposed to make the next step up on the ladder easier, yet it looks like it is just shifting the next rung to an even higher and higher position.
When extended internship becomes more and more normalised, who's to say that workers in the future are not going to be increasingly more disposable?
You misunderstand me. I actually fully agree with you - people who are internmaxxing are emphatically not thriving.