Philip Delves-Broughton

Indolence and experience

Internships cannot offer anything as valuable as a leisurely teenage summer, says Philip Delves Broughton

 School holidays for the children of the affluent used to be about doing nothing in particular. Tagging along to a sun-baked villa, perhaps, or slouching around Verbier in search of familiar Harrys and Rosies. For the unlucky facing an exam year, there might be a week or two of cramming. But otherwise, these were the weeks of indolence and precious irresponsibility, the time to charge the batteries for the looming decades of early mornings in the City.

Not any more. The battle for jobs is starting ever earlier, creeping grimly into these teenage years in the form of the ‘internship’. This is no summer job in a pub or a shop to make a bit of money, but a full-blown, put on a suit and go and lurk around adults professional try-out. There is of course little a 17-year-old can realistically contribute to an investment bank or law firm, but this does not stop them elbowing each other aside for that first rung on the path to the boardroom.

In America, the professionalisation of the teenage holiday has reached absurd levels. The equivalent of sixth-form students now use professional ‘experience planners’ to design holiday activities which will stand out on a university and eventual job application. The New York Times recently reported that ‘a dizzying array of programs have cropped up to feed the growing anxiety that summer must be used constructively. Students can study health care in Rwanda, veterinary medicine in the Caribbean or cell cloning at Brown University, or learn about Sikkim, India’s only Buddhist state.’

New York’s best high schools now insist that students demonstrate ‘mastery’ or ‘passion’. To be ‘well-rounded’ is to lack a crucial edge in one particular skill. Universities bemoan the disappearance of the athlete who can play several sports, because children are forced to focus on one at an early age.

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