Internships fill in the gap between reality and desire

Paul Serilla Serilla Warfare

Arguably, college is one of the best opportunities in life to build up your dreams. I don't mean dreams like winning the lotto, or dating the supermodel and definitely not the one with cigar-smoking snake who chases me through the magic land of doughnuts and tells me my mother thinks I am a failure - I mean big dreams. Life ambitions. The big cartoon light bulb above your head that clicks on and says, "This is what I want to do for the next 50 or so odd years."

Its not always an easy thing to do, especially for all of us whose future career path is less than crystalline. I know some people that practically have a flowchart that lays out a schedule for success. From a lunchtime interview next Thursday to their Nobel Prize victory in 2020, they have a clear direction.

Sometimes my "plan" looks more like a painting by Jackson Pollock or, scarier yet, one of those M.C. Escher sketches where stairs are moving in every direction without going anywhere.

The problem for those of us in the average LSA humanities-style major is we sometimes fill in the huge holes in our master plans with desires we liberally substitute for reality. I often wonder where ambition ends and self-delusion begins (the best I can figure it is somewhere around me and an Oscar-winning screenplay).

Those dreams are the reason summer internships exist. Real people do not often do interesting things. They work in offices for huge corporations doing what is questionably called work - that is where we are headed. Around junior year, many of us start looking for summer employment that doesn't involve an apron or - even worse - a paper hat. Internships help qualm the mighty fears of an empty resume, the only symbol of refuge beyond campus and outside your parents' house.

In short, the internship is a step toward selling out a mental image of accomplishment and happiness for some self-sufficiency and stability.

As you might have guessed, I am testing the waters of this so-called "real world." I commute every day to my internship and sit in a cubicle at the Detroit offices of a huge multinational corporation. As far as I can tell, the company does very little, even though people are busy and overloaded with work.

Everyday I have more work and I provide a vital link in making sure nothing gets done. My father likes to call me Dilbert, after the cartoon character who has become a pop icon through jokes about paper clips and computer failures. A lot of what I do is recycling - summarizing reports that are really summaries of several other reports that are, in turn, summaries of data. I am sure the company made one study in about 1952 and has kept everyone busy re-summarizing earlier reports without taking another study.

The work is not incredibly fulfilling, but I have not completely abandoned the bigger dreams I spent so many hours daydreaming. Ironically, I am keeping my dream of writing for a living (I know, don't quit my day job) as I type this column in my office cubicle (the boss went home early). It's a mix of cold corporate "reality" and something I like to do, but am not sure I can ever feed myself with. For now, it works.

The bottom line is that gainful employment does not mean you stop chasing that intangible portrait of who you are and what you want to be. Relentless dedication to that same image does mean you can accomplish everything on your own terms.

Corporate summary: Don't sell your dreams, just downsize them.

- E-mail Paul Serilla at pserilla@umich.edu.

06-04-97