Internship struggles

LinkedIn, indeed, fashionista.com, and business of fashion, are just a few of the job-hunting sites I have used in my attempt to find an internship for the fall of 2022. 

Let me back up a little bit. 

For my college and my major, we are required to have completed a full 12 weeks of an internship in our senior year to graduate. So I did exactly what I was told to do, make a meeting with career services, perfect my resume, and start applying. 

Who knew that finding a fall internship, that was part-time and didn’t require 40+ hours a week (unpaid), where you didn’t need to have a bachelor’s degree and have sold your left kidney was so hard. 

Right now on this day July 14, 2022, at 11:18 pm, I can say I’ve applied for close to 100 internships in PR, Marketing, social media, and retail buying, and I can’t even tell you how many of those places have rejected my application without even meeting with me or even getting back to me.

I’m not stupid. I know a lot of employers see interns as a quick and easy way to free labor but Some of these employers want you to have a degree so they don’t have to teach you how to do the job but also want you to do it for free????

It’s ridiculous. 

I recently saw a listing for an unpaid internship that required THREE years of prior internship experience, HUH? 

Another internship required full-time availability for six months UNPAID.

What confuses me is the fact that most internships only offer school credit. But don’t take into consideration if I am going to classes and then coming to do your internship work, when do I have time to actually make money? School isn’t cheap, hell life itself is not cheap in America right now, do we see these gas prices? When am I going to have the time to make money if you also want me to intern on weekends.

I want an internship because I want to gain experience within the fashion industry we all know there’s no going up in the fashion industry without connections or experience or anything of the sort, But right now it’s just really hard.

Okay so let me think, right. I’m supposed to have PRIOR INTERNSHIP experience to do more internship work? How does that make sense? How does that even work? 

All I want is an internship where I am able to learn and gain experience in the field of fashion while also making connections. That’s all I want. Preferably something paid/

Whoever created unpaid internships, one eye open at all times babes because what is this?

Based on the time we are living in, specifically in the US, do you think it’s still ethical to offer unpaid internships? 

It should not be this difficult to secure a simple internship!

This was a rant written on July 16th, 2022 and but still felt like this deserved to be uploaded. I definitely will be writing an update.

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