No Filing Please: College Students in the Work Force
Our parents tell us we can do anything. Our boss says "file this, please." So how's a generation full of overachieving students going to meld with the work force?
I don't have to tell you that getting into a good college is getting harder. My freshman year at Stanford, I discovered that my neighboring room contained a debate champion and someone featured in Teen People -- this was not unusual. Students need to be enterprising, self-motivated, and creative just to be considered.
One of my friends got an internship at a big-deal law firm in New York City. He was excited going into the summer to get a chance to do real work and to figure out if he wanted to be a lawyer. During the summer I asked him how it was going. His response? "I file all day." Let's just say he felt his time was being underutilized.
So what happens when students used to being at the top get a job at the bottom? Students used to changing the world are getting coffee. Is this a rite of passage or a waste of resources? Obviously I'm biased, I'm 20 and I want to have internships where I can do more than file. I have a suggestion for the bosses of college interns: give us a chance and I bet you'll be surprised at what we can do. We may lack job-specific experience but we learn quickly.
Boring internships may be turning students off from entering the regular rat race. Instead, many students are looking to starting their own businesses. Our business idols are the founders of Napster and Google. We, perhaps unrealistically, want quick success not a long climb up a career ladder. An Inc.com article by Donna Fenn calls this generation "the most entrepreneurial generation in our nation's history" and The Intuit Future of Small Business Report predicts a rise in young people creating their own businesses.
Instead of politely waiting for our turn to be in charge years down the line, we've learned that you have to stand out to get what you want. If going down expected routes doesn't produce results then we'll just have to go our own way.
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Wow, where do I start? Kids should work their way through college. I did. I had a lot of interesting jobs that paid for my education. I collected some great stories to tell - and I built up some good references through hard, steady, reliable work. Those references helped me get the job I aimed for and have kept for 23 years. My teenagers have jobs for the same reasons. Whining and moping around will get you a quick trip to the freeway exit where you can hold up a sign, "I'm hungry." And the suckers will give you money.
As a new graduate working for a media-monster, I will say.... GET REAL! Why would a professional who gets paid to do what they do and has their butt on the line... give their job over to YOU!? A person with no real world experience and 5 years of internships isn't good enough! The important decisions are the boss' to make. Be a team player and support your boss. Pay your dues. Work your way up the latter and then you may become boss. But seriously, why would you want to be boss? Get paid to deal with your attitude? Please-
I had a mandatory summer internship (while working on my master's)that didn't pay squat and had no official duties. I could have sat around all day roaming the halls flirting with nurses (it was a major hospital) but I instead made sure I wasn't coffee boy.
I volunteered to go out with one of the hospital's collection agents. Gave me a real perspective that even state hospitals need to get paid (on a sliding scale based on income). Gave me a face to face look at how poorly too many Americans live.
I watched an operation from start to finish and then the hospital administrator made an offhanded comment about trying to contain overtime costs of the nurses. So I volunteered to do the study and count the beans, then slice the beans a half dozen different ways, and come up with the right mix of regular time and overtime fully realizing there was a happy medium.
You make of your internship what you put into it and if you think an internship will be boring and a waste of your talents go pound nails one summer for Habitat for Humanity or work in a food bank or deliver meals on wheels, or visit shut ins. Experience comes in alot of flavors.
All work has worth and dignity. I was a trashman once, one of those guys you see along the highway picking up the crap you throw out of your car, burying the dead animals you allow to ride in the back of your pick up, running for my life because you were too impatient to not drive down the grass median at 60 miles an hour when traffic backed up. 18 of us killed in Houston in '79.
These college kids have no qualifcations! Filing or getting coffee about all they are qualified for.
Your article suggest they be be trained. Training is expensive that is what colleges are for!
Working around the offices allows them to see professional in action and no Lawyer is going to allow a part time college student access to any real information they could steal and sell to the opposition of a case.
I celebrated my 60th year on the planet last year... and then OUTSOURCED 58 days later. I wasted two months looking for another 'like' job. It wasn't to be had; so sad.
So I decided to open up as ME, doing what I know how to do but for anyone, not just an employer. I guess that is the definition of a consultant. I am now making about what I was as an employee (except for the medical insurance). Don't give up. Don't wait on someone else to help you. Take a big bite of help yourself and just go do it.
Are today's kids smarter? probably.
Are they better able to deal with adversity?
HELL NO.
Wow what a bunch of cranky middle aged reactions I found here. As someone between the two generations, I'm excited about the potential future. Baby boomers, who were so excited about their generation's potential in their 20's seem to have an ego problem admitting their accomplishments are being dwarfed by the changes that we've seen in the last 15 years.
I recently had a high school intern working as a developer - and he did everything but file. What a great summer of tough challenges and amazing accomplishments.
If you think technology and mind power can't change the world, stay blind and unhappy in your gloomy corner
Honestly. Are these students really "Used to changing the world?" I somehow doubt that while waiting on Mommy and Daddy's latest check to arrive that they are making a difference anywhere.
Ahh, the way life's expectations can warp into something so different. My daughter was at the top of her game as a political science major. She grew tired of the air travel to the distant state of her college, so switched to one closer to home.
She met a poet. She changed her major to creative writing. Now the poet is long gone and she works at a supermarket checkout.
I have advised her that her only option is to get into graduate school and get a degree that will, at least, allow her to teach writing at some college; inspiring more classrooms of creative writers to graduate into lives on the checkout lines.
Go placidly among the produce and dairy aisles.
Wow. A college student who thinks her generation is the best and most competitive yet. What a novel idea and not an opinion held by every 20 year old in the past 100 years.
Yes. That is sarcasm. Fact: today's college students are no better r worse than yesterday's. Just a lot more egotistical.
I moonlight.
Well, Megan, I wish you great success and I hope that most of your idealism somehow survives. Yet you should always remember that for every Napster or Google there are a hundred-thousand companies whom you will never be able to name by reading the pages of any newspaper.
Google gets a thousand resumes daily, and if you share that dream or merely try to duplicate it, you could be setting yourself up for disappointment ... you've convinced yourself that happiness is to be found on the other side of yonder fence (if only you could get there), when happiness, truly, is where you MAKE it. Hint: it's not always easy to make.
Every single day, throughout your day, you interact in some way with dozens of "companies," whose services you depend on but never think about. Even in the halls of your college somebody is walking those halls in the wee-hours of the morning behind a floor-polishing machine. When you walk into a clean restroom... somebody cleaned it. The list goes on.
I don't think you become "successful" in this world because somebody else tells you that you are. "You have plenty of friends and the fun never ends, that is as long as you're buyin'."
You'll be successful when you find something that you truly like to do, that you do passably well, and that someone else out there appreciates. Strange as it may seem, that thing might be a spotlessly-clean toilet. It might be that cup of cappucino that was made "just right" and served to you with a pleasant smile.
Once you find that "thing," you probably won't and probably shouldn't be doing "that" for the rest of your life. You shouldn't be content with that. But whatever you DO, do it well.
I think a lot of older folks who's jobs have been outsourced will tell you that you are right to start your own businesses. Don't take the jobs you don't what get out there and do what you want to do. Then you won't be 50 something and kicked out on the street with no prospects--not even a filing job.
If only we had socialized health care (not socialized health insurance), then starting your own business would be an option.
What? Don't tell the people who start more than half a million new businesses every year in this country.
All the good jobs are being outsourced. Faxing and filing and getting coffee is actually preparing you for the jobs that will be available when you graduate. Just thank Wall Street for your future job prospects.
Yes all Wall Streets fault. Remember that when you walk into Wall Mart to save a few dollars on something. The market is fulfilling YOUR needs. It is YOUR demand driving the executives to move to cut costs or be sent to the land of the dinosaur.
Now as for my smartest new employees. Especially the Ivy Leaugue types I like to make them get me bagels every day for a few weeks. Good to teach them that they are on the bottom of the totem pole. Then build them back up. Very like the military. Funny thing is how many get the bagel orders wrong :-)
The bottom line is, someone has to file, fax, and photocopy in most offices. And, the employees lowest on the totem pole will probably get that work -- especially interns. I would view it as a part of paying your dues. And, I would talk with management to see if they can carve out some of your time for more interesting work.
Indeed, my first job (while in college) was to tear paper off a line-printer and shove it through a slot. I didn't care: I was "INSIDE."
Remember that no matter who you are or what you do, someone's buying it. It might be your employer or it might be your customer; no diff. People DO observe, and they DO decide, and sometimes they decide with their gut. A resume is nothing more than a promise. Does this "lowly filing intern" file things well? Accurately? Steadily? Does he peek into the files when he thinks no one is looking? Does he plink away at the water-cooler?
Try this: pick someone at your college or your workplace and observe them. Really, observe them. Make a conscious effort to do that, but don't get noticed. Try to formulate an opinion of who they are, what drives them, and most importantly, would you entrust a task to them. Why or why not? Trust your =feelings.=
That's what happens all the time. You do it, employers do it, co-workers do it, customers do it. We all do it. And that's why the most menial position "inside" is better than sitting in a stack of hopeful 8-1/2x11 sheets of paper, still "outside."
In time you will know the value of a good reference.
When I was in college I "created" my internships. That's right, I contacted the potential employer, told them what I was intereted in, talked-up my abilities, and asked them if they could find it in their budgets to hire me as an intern for the summer. This worked out great for me, I gained a lot of experience and learned a lot about my future employment options. The employers got a lot out of it too, as they got someone who was genuinely interested in the work, and they got real product from me rather than just someone to pass off the busywork to.
However, what I think can be a problem is college students who think that they are too good for entry-level work. When I graduated, I got a job as an assistant editor at a magazine. I was well-qualified (maybe even over qualified). However, what I learned by doing the mail duties, the filing, and putting together what were most arguably the most boring sections of the magazine, was how the office worked. I learned about the interpersonal communication between publisher and editor (without being directly in the line of fire). This entry-level work sheltered me until I learned how to operate in the environment on my own. I think it's a mistake to think you're "too good" for any task just because you have a college degree.
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Posted August 24, 2007 | 11:19 AM (EST)