It seems like finding an internship in college is a lot like
finding love in college. It’s hard to find one that’s a good match for you.
Students will apply to dozens of places, but might only hear back from one or
two – if they’re lucky.

The search for the perfect internship becomes even harder
when payment comes into play.

“I’ve applied to maybe 15 different internships,” says
second-year RIT journalism student TiannaManon. “All but one of those is for credit only.”

The problem with credit-only internships?
If students are not currently taking classes at a college, they have to pay for
all of the credits they would get from the internship.

“If I were to do an internship over the summer, it would
cost me $960 per credit,” Manon says.

Paying for credits is a problem for a lot of students like Manon. While engineers and software designers can find paid
internships easily, liberal-arts students have a much more difficult time
finding a paid internship.

For months I’ve been searching for internships in the
journalism and photography fields. The few that I have come across that
actually pay are in Manhattan, where you would end up paying more to live than
you would make working for three months at that internship. Not to mention that
it seems like the only ones that pay are the ones that require you to already
have a few internships under your belt.

After my entire Newswriting II class this quarter presented
our list of dream internships the other week, my professor HindaMandell pointed out something very obvious, that I
had honestly not thought about too much before.

“To get a good internship, you have to have already had an
internship somewhere else,” said Mandell.

Looking at all of these internship application requirements
online, I realize just how true it is. You need experience to get experience in
this world. The only bad thing is that sometimes you just might have to pay for
that experience.

Since I am leaving school soon, I am looking into
internships all over the country. But since the vast majority of internships
related to my field of work are unpaid, and since it is illegal for companies
to have people work for free, it looks like I just might have to pay to get
credit for an internship.

Honestly, I’d rather work for free than pay for experience.

This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2013.