By Emilia Benton

After months of countless interviews last spring, I was psyched to land my dream internship at Glamour magazine. I had been so focused on scoring a summer internship that I didn’t really think about the fact that on top of not getting paid, I would owe the University $2,328 for course credit, as the University requires all journalism students to do at least one internship for credit to graduate. Additionally, many companies require that their interns work for college credit. That’s right, the University was essentially being paid for my hard work at Glamour. And to top it all off, they were charging me for on-campus services that went unused, since I did not set foot on campus all summer.

Don’t get me wrong-I can honestly say that I enjoyed my internship 100 percent. In addition to my 20 hours a week at my job-on-the-side at Barnes and Noble, I worked 24 hours a week at Glamour. It was one exhausting summer, and I absolutely loved it. But believe it or not, it’s expensive to work for free. I already had my own expenses to take care of each month: $850 rent, $76 unlimited Metro Card and around $200 for food. In total, this was about $3941 for the summer. Add the $2328 the University charged, and I spent $6269 to work for free.

In addition to $2,205 for tuition, I was charged a $78 University fee, a $35 technology fee and a $10 activity fee. At $123 in total, these fees were discounted from what they would cost during a regular semester ($462); I’ll give them that. (And I have no complaints there, because I definitely take advantage of these services when I actually am on campus.)

But what about a discounted housing fee? Without one, there was no way was I even going to consider commuting from campus to work each day, as the University charges $3885.75 for a high-rise double for the whole summer. Or at least, how about some help finding affordable student housing in the city? That extra $123 spent on fees could have gone toward anything from my rent to my monthly Metro Cards for the subway, or even to my groceries.

Instead, I threw away money on useless fees. I had plenty of time to think about these things while I was counting the days each week until I got my next paycheck from Barnes and Noble. Or when I was busy scrounging the giveaway tables at work for free stuff every chance I got, or contemplating stocking up on Ramen Noodles at yet another visit to the supermarket.

These fees should be waived for students not residing on campus or on Long Island for summer internships, or the University should allow this course to be added to our account summaries for the previous or the following full semester. This is highly unlikely to happen, however, as rising tuition costs appear to be a nationwide problem.

I have two more years here at the University, and I’m sure that I will have to go through this again if I want to gain as much experience as possible through more internships. All summer, people told me that the editorial intern title is slowly replacing the editorial assistant title as the entry-level position in the journalism industry. Hopefully this will prove true, and I’ll be able to write off these expenses as being worth it in the end.

Emilia Benton is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].

(Alex Murray)