3 Ways Unpaid Internships Pay

The career seminar entailed one eye-opening lesson after another. Everything I learned immediately caused me to say to myself, “Jeez, I wish I knew that when I was a Freshman.”

While the workshop taught me a number of things related to personal and professional development, the one thing that stuck out for me was the noticeable fact how unprepared I was for life after graduation. I was lacking a critical variable: experience.

I had prior workplace experience, but none of it was relevant to any of the industries I was curious about getting involved in. I knew I had to make-up for lost time so I went wild my last semester of college and got three separate internships. One was in radio, the other in marketing, and ironically, the third was with CAREEREALISM. I was worried though, because none of them were paid internships. I was in college and didn’t have much money!

Wow, was I wrong. The internships may not have contributed to my life in a monetary way, but they sure paid-off in other ways. The following explains how a single internship experience compares financially against the benefits of a full-time position at a business.