Picking up from yesterday –
I don’t want to sound entitled. However, I’ve run the errands. I’ve gotten the coffee. I’ve made the copies. I interned. A lot. In high school, in college, in summers, I interned.
I work now (in my own office – with a door, and everything!).
I’m not against interning again if it’s for writers on a sitcom, or for a political office – something that’s going to teach me something new.
But an internship that might help me to work behind the scenes in the entertainment industry? That’s what I already do for a living, which leads me to another point. It would be hard to commit to an internship, since I take jobs as they come, and they often have ever-changing schedules.
I’d have to get some incredible internship for me to want to prioritize it above a job. And if I do, then how am I going to make money to keep living… not to mention to pay to work (at an internship) in the first place?
I’ll talk to Berklee’s Office of Experiential Learning just to see. It doesn’t hurt to talk it out and to see what’s possible. You never know. There may be a life-changing internship available out there.
Berklee says you can be compensated for your internship. My guess is I could finagle it so I could fill out paperwork with one of my jobs, using that job as my internship. (That would make that $2,500 of credits truly just a fee.)
To pay $2,500 to keep the opportunity to graduate from Berklee… I don’t know that it’s worth it. After all, isn’t the whole point of Berklee not to graduate?
Every time I’ve ever met an alum out here, if the question of graduating comes up, they always say with a chuckle, “No, of course I didn’t graduate. Did you?”
At Berklee, you’re sort of made to feel like a failure if you do graduate. The idea is you should be too busy working to bother with this whole college graduating stuff.
(To be clear, I don’t think that idea is led by the administration. My understanding is the administration actually wants to stop that attitude, as they seem to be pushing to get the graduation rates up.)
As I’ve said before, once you’re in at Berklee, you’re in for life. I could still take classes to my heart’s content. I would just never graduate. I’m telling you right now, I will not take those extra 10 liberal arts credits at Berklee.
It comes down to this. I decide to pay the money to prolong my catalogue year, or I make the official decision that I’m cutting off any future options to graduate from Berklee.
I’m leaning toward letting go of ever officially graduating from Berklee. Who needs that piece of paper?
But we’ll see what the Office of Experiential Learning has to say, in case there’s an internship that makes me change my tune.
[Edited to add: Someone who views education as very important read this post, and gifted me the money to take the internship (aka pay the fee). I used work experience I was getting anyway, filled out a few extra pieces of paper, and bam – internship counted as complete. I now have another 4 years of options on the clock.]