There should be no shame in sabbatical

Somewhere along the line, we made college the most defining years of our collective experience. We imbued it with a pressure that makes everything seem like possibly the end of existence if we screw up. And that’s just not right.

This may seem like it’s coming out of left field, but we’re nearing the end of second semester, which means that it’s internship season for most undergraduates and the most stressing part of the job hunt for graduating seniors.

I think we could all use a reminder that it’s going to work out.
True, there will be some people who will head off to New York for their internship at Goldman Sachs or what have you. But for every one of those people, realize that there are probably thirty more who are returning home to work a smaller-scale internship or even stay in Bloomington for the summer.

And that’s great.

I’ll be graduating this May, and if I get an internship back in Chicago, I’ll be moving home to live with my parents for a bit. If I don’t get any type of
internship, I’ll probably live out the rest of my lease here in Bloomington.

So yes, this column is self-affirmation that I’ll be fine, but it’s also to show you that we often get blinded by this idea that we have to move away from home and make bank right this minute or we’ll never do it.

There are realities that we have to face, now more than ever, that were mostly brought up in Eduardo Salas’s piece on internships in yesterday’s edition of the Indiana Daily Student.

We’re all gunning for internships that aren’t paid, that have a low chance of employment and may not even offer a truly educational experience.
Quite frankly, this is stupid.

When you look at the facts plainly, we’re in an idiotic spiral.

I don’t want to have to go through this internship process, but then I’m not finding any entry-level work at any valuable companies, so I have to go through the process to gain experience. We’re stuck in the machine.

So maybe you don’t need to throw yourself into the machine so quickly.
Professors and professionals take sabbatical all the time. After many of us have gone to school for seventeen years without a break, I think we deserve a little bit of time to reconvene and think about the future.

And yes, some people will try to shame you for that — the gap year seems to have completely fallen out of existence for fear of laziness. But there’s no reason you should feel bad for pausing in order to gain momentum.

It’s fine to take a step back and be rational about your choices.
Some people will thrive on making irrational choices and powering through unhappiness or being poor.

I can’t do that, and I refuse to feel bad for it any longer.
And you shouldn’t either.

Good luck with the hunt, Hoosiers.

sjostrow@indiana.edu