David Marchino | The language of the resume

Testing: One, Two | Summer without an internship

By David Marchino 07/29/15 10:57pm

With the beginning of this year’s fall semester looming just a month away, thousands of undergrads are purchasing their textbooks, contacting their professors and preparing themselves for the first sentence they’ll encounter upon their return to Penn: “What did you do with your summer?” Innocuous as the inquiry may seem, to many of us, it is a loaded question. In managing Penn, I find it easy to become locked into the interviewee mindset. Our thoughts and experiences are supposed to impress, to elevate us above the competition. But, really, is this all they are meant to do?

As Penn students, I believe we’re exposed to a dangerous — albeit practical — psychology, the need to convert each of our experiences into the language of resume. The bewilderment and wonder of our trips abroad is extricated as we transmute them into “international travels for the express purpose of enriching sociocultural understanding.” Our art project dalliances are robbed of their whimsy as we repurpose them to function as “practical experience in the field of graphic design.” And, when we are confronted with a moment in our life that cannot be cut-pasted into a compact little grid swept under the prestigious bold ink “WORK EXPERIENCE,” there is uneasiness. Guilt. The anxiety that arises from the dreaded internship-less summer.

I speak as someone who has tried to navigate the professional side of summer off. I have filled out the applications, written the cover letters and interviewed too many times only to be rejected again and again. And, in the face of all this rejection, I was forced to confront that which I as a Penn student have been groomed to deplore. Free time. What once amounted to little more than 10-minute breathers between classes, clubs, fitness and work suddenly filled my entire day. Life — bold, unstructured life — smacked me in the face, daring me to make something important out of its chaos.

In summer 2014, I got a job, and not at as a research assistant or as a high school mentor. An honest-to-goodness full time job at a convenience store, like high school all over again. I wiped windows, stocked freezers and mopped bathrooms 40 hours a week as my boss grumbled behind me, “Spotless this time, brainiac.” I returned home with throbbing feet and aching back muscles only to crawl into bed and rest for the next day’s shift. I was not using any of the knowledge I’d accumulated in my courses at Penn, and much of the work was mentally tedious, unfulfilling. It was manual labor — something I’d thought below me as an Ivy League student. A regression from my graduation into academia.

But I grew to appreciate it, especially in hindsight. There’s a quiet pride in running a store, in satisfying the customers. I still light up when I think back to the appreciative nods of the construction workers, the gentle smiles of the nurses and the big hopeful eyes of the children who strolled into my store. Sure, it was a modest help I was providing, bagging their Tastykakes and Combos, but I have since come to realize that personal growth is not endemic only to the professional setting. I wore no tie, attended no conferences, but I grew in that store, and learned to take pride in the small successes and praise.

A life is not lived with the intention to fill a resume, nor are we meant to weigh experience solely in terms of professional application. When we commit ourselves to our work as so many of us have, it is easy to forget the importance of hobbies, casual interests and fantasies. I am not calling for the students of Penn to spend their time from campus foolishly — only challenging them to recall that enlightenment exists outside of the professional world, too. Growth and wisdom can be found anywhere — in the errant road trip across the country, in the humble occupation of the store clerk, in the sandy faces of the festival crowd or even at home in the unlatched text of a book. Experience is what you make it. Professional, casual, make it meaningful. Make it worth holding on to.

DAVID MARCHINO is a rising College senior from Philadelphia studying English. His email address is dmarchi@sas.upenn.edu.

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