Ellington

College internships are often meant to be educational and enriching experiences in the work field, but, for some students, they turn out to be unpaid lessons in brewing coffee. Luckily for students, there are rules to protect them.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, an unpaid internship needs to provide similar training in an educational environment, be beneficial for the intern, and not displace regular employees.

UW junior Ben Peven, a finance major, was not aware of the six criteria of U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division for unpaid internships although he has held three internships while attending the UW, one of which was unpaid.

Though some of the rules weren’t followed during his unpaid internship, he said it didn’t detract from the experience for him.

“I feel that these rules are very appropriate for unpaid internships,” Peven said, “and I don’t think it would have changed the way my employer treated me or the way I did my job if I knew of them before I went into employment.”

Although some students aren’t interested in making a living off internships, they feel as though getting a beneficial experience can be difficult.

Peven also experienced his fair share of a less-than-perfect internship experience just last quarter at Merrill Lynch.

“It was basically your typical internship,” Peven said. “My adviser … would always ask me to get him coffee, [retrieve] these papers, and look for this folder.”

Although she thinks internships help students prepare for the workforce, freshman Caitlyn Chaffin felt that an internship in which a student’s only responsibility is getting coffee, making copies, and filing papers isn’t a “real internship.”

“They aren’t beneficial,” she said. “You can’t make a career out of that.”

Thousands of eager students dressed in suits and holding the best copies of their resumes flooded the UW Career Center’s annual Internship Fair in Mary Gates Hall to talk to the more than 40 companies advertising available internships on Tuesday.

“I’m hoping students will start to get ideas about internships and get the opportunity to meet companies,” said Emma O’Neill, assistant director for employee relations at the UW Career Center. “The real goal is for them to make connections.”

Domonique Scull, peer associate at the career center, said although many of the internships may be related to business or engineering, the internships at the fair are not restricted to certain majors.

“We don’t limit the types of internships that they’re looking for,” Scull said. “If the companies want to be involved we let them be involved on a first-come, first-serve basis.”

Though many students turned out for the fair, internships can also be found in other places.

Junior and accounting major Jasmine Reliford found her internship through the UW College of Engineering. After interning for Boeing the summer before her freshman year, her perception of internships was far from ideal.

“It was a lot of punching in numbers and printing up invoices and mailing them out,” Reliford said. “So after that internship I was like, ‘I do not want to do anything like this ever again.’ For eight hours a day you’re punching in numbers and looking at a screen.”

The next year she reluctantly accepted another summer internship at a large accounting firm and fell in love with the future she had always dreamed of having, she said.

At the Washington, D.C. branch, Reliford was able to sit in meetings with clients, compile contracts, and attend job shadows with the plethora of highly qualified individuals working for PricewaterhouseCoopers. After the experience, she fully advocated internships to all her colleagues.

“I’ll be sitting in accounting class and be like, ‘I totally worked with something like this in my internship,’” Reliford said, “and the fact that I get that to put it into perspective gives me such a bigger advantage compared to the others — because I have seen the end result because I have worked it in a professional setting.”

Both Peven and Reliford had both beneficial and less-than-satisfactory internship experiences. Regardless, they both feel the internship experience is a necessary one for any growing and ambitious college student.

“There are a ton of opportunities out there and [you need to] take advantage of as many of them as you can,” Peven said. “You’ll take away something no matter what you do from any work-related experience.”

Reach contributing writer Lizzie Tao at development@dailyuw.com.

CORRECTION: The article originally stated that Jasmine Reliford’s internship at Boeing was unpaid. Her internship, and all internships at Boeing, are paid.