An internship is indubitably a Gen-Z term, which positively replaced the functioning systems like apprenticeship and temporary staffing to a greater beyond right after it shot up to popularity.
One of the obvious and solid reasons behind this is that it connected the seekers with contrasting wants in their career with the best in the business without much sweat and steam.
Learning, exposure, and developing being the primitive motives, rewarding the interns financially has always remained a hot debate.
The piece aims to discuss those downright arguments which make the stipends an indispensable part of an internship.
‘I aspire to be an Intern!’
Internships, in general, mark that phase of an individual postulant’s career where they cannot learn or develop something through financial means but struggle and render their labor for real.
It is the blunt realization that what you are doing is absolute and authentic, which may even rattle your brain to multiple realms.
Making yourself unsettlingly comfortable in the driver’s seat for the first time shall qualify as a parallel to your internship and advent of your career; where getting to know how to accelerate forward, when to steer on diversions and change gears, keep checking the fuel gauge, when and how to apply breaks and most essentially where and how to park yourself.
An imperative understanding of these will groom you enough to take on any terrains and climates, sometimes even uncharted courses.
Also Read: Reckoning the future of the virtual classrooms
‘I aspire to be an Intern, but should stipend be a real concern?’
The world has always weighed the treasures and riches of money with all known qualities of mankind evenly, simply making it a near paramount motive that drives any kind of labor.
Interns are predominantly fuelled by the perks of learning something real, gain some corporate exposure, establish some connections, developing some practical skills, and a bunch of other management textbook clichés fed by the b-schools.
This has propitiously created an impression that stipends are truly overrated and not at all a matter of concern, compared to learning and stuff.
Contrary to the statement, absolute learning advocates the importance of putting your sweat and flesh on the frontline for every buck you make.
Stipends aren’t a sign of greed or overestimating one’s abilities, but it is no less than the right of every intern, which only depends on the degree of time, brain, and physical effort invested.
Some of the corporates and even some b-schools wave the flag of learning and exposure as a disguise to mask their loathness and incompetence in rewarding or get rewarded, respectively, with the overrated stipend system.
It does leave an impression as they purposely shun the very same factor that effortlessly serves as a prime motivating ingredient to their permanent labor.
‘I want to hire a bunch of interns, but why should I pay a stipend?’
Simply put, the firms should reward their interns for every single existing reason they are reimbursing their employees. Removing the duration and degree of motive from the equation, the interns also need to be paid for their services, which may even repay them in more
advantageous ways. By hiring interns, the firm is exposed to a larger pool of potential candidates who could turn out to as the spearheads of a new era for them. By rewarding them with a decent stipend system, the firms can miraculously instill the values like responsibility, discipline, accountability, punctuality, and even leadership to a greater intensity than years of schooling and textbooks failed to build. It will be their first real earning for many, and that is some sense of loyalty that any firm shouldn’t disregard. Furthermore, the effects of the stipend in boosting their self-confidence and affirmation will enhance the working environment, wide opening the doors to more such candidates.
The Final Word
‘To work with love is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.’ -Kahlil Gibran
The satisfaction experienced and attained in the duties you are performing is enough to wipe the impurities of labor with your own sweat.
A bad, dispirited, or a forced internship experience can even scar the finest performing qualities and values you behold.
Remember, the metric of return on investment isn’t tied up to monetary terms and can also be implied to generate the efforts to satisfaction ratio too.
