Tired of school? Well here, have some health care debate, and some career planning! First, at 8pm in Hamilton 303, the College Republicans host Paul Howard of the Manhattan Institute to talk about health care reform in congress and elsewhere.

Then from 9 to 10:30, get yourself a science internship at the aptly named Science Internship Panel in Lerner’s Satow Room. What could possibly drag you from your room to such serious career/policy oriented discussions this close to Thanksgiving? Free. Food.

-Photo via Biojobblog.com

How bad is the economy? Even the coffee lackeys are going to be out of work. For the 2009 internship season, companies are hiring almost 21 percent fewer interns. In a double shaft to college students everywhere, the number of applicants for these positions has increased by around the same percentage. That leaves far more people vying for far fewer positions.

If you are truly, truly desperate for an internship (and loaded), the WSJ reports that parents have been forking over thousands of dollars to buy internships for their children. Also, the bizarrely named University of Dreams will guarantee you an internship, if you pay them $5,000 to $9,000 dollars, that is.

The glimmer of hope is that the pay rates for internships have actually gone up for this year, but, even if you nab a high paying internship, you will still have this to contend with.

 -DJB

The semester just started, but summer internship application deadlines are fast approaching.

To that end, the Center for Career Education is helping sponsor an internship fair this afternoon at 5 o’clock in Earl Hall Auditorium designed to get you on track for your summer plans.

Expect a panel discussion by major city employers and a workshop on internship hunting led by career development author Lindsey Pollak. (Yeah, Bwog hasn’t heard of her either, but she does have Facebook.)

Even more importantly, the event has free food. “Especially cupcakes,” according to CCSC 2011 President Learned Foote.

Anne Hathaway, collegiate role model

Let me tell you about the time I got an internship

An “interview” with the guy behind an actually really cool blog 

Stereotypically railing against enforced gender stereotypes

“We put not only the lipstick on the pig, but a dress, and we give it a tampon”

In which Bwog staffers reminisce–namelessly, by and large–about how they occupied themselves for the last few months. If you’ve got something better, send
it (bwgossip@columbia.edu) in and we’ll share!

So my boss just sent me out on an errand, with nothing more than an address and his credit card. I assumed the location was a store, I assumed wrong. I ended up at a vet’s office, picking up his cat’s medicine. I returned to the office, pissed off, and told him, “I hope your cat doesn’t die.”

Ten minutes later, he walks over sheepishly, hands me a bottle of shitty wine and apologizes. Cellar No. 8. California Merlot. 2005, aged to perfection.

 Small(ish)-town newspaper writing is inexorably absurd. My summer experiences include: riding a creaky fire-boat around Lake Erie with drunk seamen, driving 2 hours in the rain because the police in Pennsylvania cracked a case about a pizza delivery man who robbed a bank just before his head literally exploded, interviewing historical re-enactors in one of their encampments (including a man named Ghost in the Head who actually lived the life of a 19th-century Native American trapper), having another reporter violently cuss out a cop who didn’t want to tell me the name of another cop’s baby who drowned in a pool, trying to get a bunch of media-hatin’ rednecks at a freakin’ tractor pull to talk to me… Not to mention the obituaries!

…Like sand through an hourglass, such were the days of my life.

Read more…

The march of overachievers continues today as Bwog salutes Frances Jeffrey-Coker C’10. The frolicsome freshman apparently decided that CCE’s Wall Street connections didn’t go quite far enough, and has decided to enter “the ultimate internship contest”, offered by the promoters of Will Smith’s upcoming film, The Pursuit of Happyness [sic] for, among other things, a coveted Morgan Stanley i-banking slot. The NY Times business blog, Deal Book, advertised the finalists a few days ago, among them our very own Frances, who can now count herself among the elite the Times has deemed worthy of the title “next Aleksey Vayner“.

Bwog gives Frances a pretty good chance given the competition. One discovered the contest when rummaging through her email’s trash bin and can’t seem to stop monotonically self-deprecating, while another claims to have enjoyed warming his basketball team’s bench and feels the need to preface one comment with “while Michael Jackson’s advice may not be the best for life…” Then there’s the “honors finance student” whose minimalist video proclaims that he works for a “buy-side institutional investor institution” before declaring “I want to become a better artist.” In this context, who can fail to be charmed by Frances’ classical campus backdrop, pop culture references, and her serenade to the soundtrack of Sister Act II? Quoth the Times, it’s simply “the most cinematic video of the four.”

See (and vote) for Frances’ and the other contestants’ videos here.

-CJS

UPDATE: …and, if you’re so inclined, join the related Facebook group for moral support.