Lisa Zhu | Keeping the stress out of summer

Last summer, while many of her friends in Washington and Wall Street made coffee for congressmen and CEOs, College senior Elizabeth Slavitt did something inconceivable. She went on vacation.

"I went to Peru with my friend for a month," Slavitt told me. "We traveled all over the whole country, practiced our Spanish and did a five day trip to Machu Picchu."

While some may think of such a decision as career suicide, such misconceptions were clearly not the case here. Not only did she have a fantastic summer, Slavitt also managed to land a stellar full-time job upon returning to Penn.

"I think that in a lot of ways, I gained more from traveling . than in an internship because it helped me learn more about myself and the world, and it exposed me to people that I wouldn't have encountered," she said.

Unfortunately, many students here never receive these types of summer experiences during their college years. Instead, spurred on by Penn's pervasive pre-professional culture, we spend so much time obsessing over where we're working during summer vacation that we forget to actually take a break.

Of course, part of the reason for students' heightened anxiety over internships is the changing nature of the job market.

"The reason why all this stress is built up is because there is an increasing emphasis on work experience," said Career Services spokeswoman Barbara Hewitt. "Internships are becoming increasingly more important to getting a full-time job when you graduate."

But just because previous experience is becoming more commonplace among undergraduates, doesn't mean that not having "Summer Analyst, Goldman Sachs" on your resume will shut you out of the workforce for life (it will, however, ruin all your chances of scoring with that hot girl from Finance 203).

Instead, having internship experience is only one factor when firms assess each candidate's hiring potential.

"For many employers, it's also your work experience, your extracurriculars, certainly your academics that matter," said Hewitt. "There's lots of things [students] could do over the summer that would be valuable . As long as students are positive about their experiences, it can be viewed as positive by employers."

That said, for many students, the quest for internships is also heavily driven by financial need - in addition to future success.

Fortunately, Penn not only provides opportunities for students to have extraordinary summer experiences, but it also funds them on many occasions. As a result, students can often travel abroad or engage in unpaid nonprofit work under the guise of academic research or other Penn-affiliated programs.

"I spent two months working at a bank and then a few weeks doing nonprofit consulting in India through Penn International Business Volunteers," said Wharton sophomore Erol Toker. "But when I got back, I was feeling really, really tired and a little upset. The summer went by, and I felt like I missed out on something huge."

So, regardless of whether we end up crunching numbers at an investment bank or playing with elementary school kids at a summer camp, it's important to remember how unique and ephemeral our college years are.

Twenty years from now, most of us will be working somewhere completely different from where we began our full-time careers upon graduation.

And at that point in time, our fondest memories of college probably won't include that really great Excel training we had during the first week of our banking internship.

So before we become too wrinkled to lie for hours in the sun; before our necks and feet develop constant aches from wearing ties and heels; before bills and diapers take their toll on our mental health - let's pledge to take back our summer.

Lisa Zhu is a Wharton and College junior from Cherry Hill, N.J., United Minorities Council chairwoman and Undergraduate Assembly member. Her e-mail is zhu@dailypennsylvanian.com. Zhu-ology appears Fridays.

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