College Internship Programs
College Internship Programs are overrated.
College internships can be very necessary wonderful career springboards that make the entry level period of most careers go more smoothly. The smoother the early phase of a career goes the quicker it can launch someone into the fast track to financial success and career bliss.
The college internship programs that are prized by many semi-informed college students are often thought of as the ultimate prizes when it comes to summer internship opportunities. The truth of the matter is that these cookie cutter internship opportunities are not the truly unique opportunities that the most ambitious students are looking want. If you look around any disgruntled office you'll find middle aged middle managers that hate coming to work every day. Many of these people have been coming into the same job day in and day out for over a decade and without really planning to just assume they'll do the same for another ten plus years. These less than enthusiastic workers are quick to complain about their station in life without ever actually making an effort to improve it. These types of workers are typically the end product of the standard college internship programs. If you surveyed most of the individuals that were just described you'd likely find a common background thread in the form of a predictable past that included standard, run of the mill, cookie cutter college internship programs.
As depressing as it is to say a standard college internship program can be vastly superior to the alternative of doing nothing even remotely productive during the summer. There are of course rare instances where being off the beaten path can actually be worthwhile. Some of the people that take the road less traveled actually do benefit in the long run from not being stuck on a predicable career path with an understood ceiling of the maximum level of success. There is an old adage that says "you'll never get rich working for someone else" and there is a great deal of truth in that statement. For many individuals that either get lucky or find their calling later in life there can be much benefit in not being stuck on what is considered to be a traditional career path.
Regardless of what sorts of college internships or Summer jobs an individual is exploring it is important to keep in mind that someone that wants unique results needs to do something unique. If you want to be unsuccessful do what unsuccessful people do. If you want to be pretty successful do what pretty successful people do. If you want to be extraordinarily successful then you need to do what extraordinarily successful people do. By definition extraordinary people aren't ordinary and that means they don't do ordinary things.
The secret to success is merely in the approach and attitude. The ideology is effectively to work smarter, not harder. Getting a unique internship that puts you on the fast track to career success and ultimately extraordinary results doesn't have to be any more difficult than getting into a typical college internship program.
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