Education and Political Internships are Class Privilege: my Struggle with becoming a Professional Adult
Education and unpaid internships are a class privilege and creates elitist culture within the government once those who can afford these things move into their fields of study. This directly impacts government representation, meaning that lower-income constituents are being represented by high-income politicians who then make policy that impacts both groups of people but who do not understand or have the experience lower-income people have that could offer deeper reflections of society and work to mend economic disparities.
My dad was raised in Northeast Minneapolis, within a few blocks of his grandparents and various aunts and uncles. There was a mixture of people in this area because it was the working-class area. This area was not racially segregated and there were plenty immigrants fresh off the boat. My dad was 12 years old when he got his first paid job in a mortuary, but he did odd jobs for his grandpa, who was a bookie, since he was around 6 years old. Eventually they moved to what was considered the suburbs for a better education. Even so, they were on the “wrong side” of town. They were strapped for cash a lot, which was compounded by his parents’ drug use and alcoholism. After graduating high school, he went to trade school for accounting and received his CPA. He doesn’t see this as impressive, breaking the physical violence and economic violence cycles that has afflicted his family. He just saw the need and knew his want to do better than his parents did.
My mom was from the “good part” of town, in the suburbs my father eventually moved to. My dad makes jokes about how my mom was a literal princess and how her father built her a lake because she liked to swim (her family had the financial ability to buy a house that was situated on a man-made lake). She always had access to a car and thus literal mobility that could aid her in social mobility. When she graduated, she went to a private college and even spent a year abroad in France. She never completed her degree through. Her social networks and family structure, as well as the social structure at the time, allowed her to quit school without any serious repercussions and she was eventually able to find a stable job that she worked at for almost 20 years.
Knowing about and being shaped (both consciously and subconsciously) by these histories and lived experiences has led me to try to both be and do better than them. Being and doing better than my parents mainly involves material growth like being able to build and pay for a home, own or lease multiple cars, afford multiple family vacations. Being and doing better in a less tangible sense is being economically and socially independent, practice and appreciate civic duty and kindness. Knowing about my father’s struggles with external factors and my mother’s struggles with internal ones have led to some conflicted feelings of morality and upward social mobility. Being taught and picking up on cues to always be better and do better is great. It’s left me with ample opportunity to do whatever and be whoever I want. It even left me some room to make mistakes and learn from them. The downside is that I am supposed to learn from them, to constantly be growing, changing and challenging myself. This environment did not account for settling, for enjoying mistakes. Multiple times, my parents explicitly told me to “never settle”. Sometimes mistakes are fun and sometimes settling can be content and peaceful. Instead of constantly thinking about repercussions of momentary events in my future, I could have just enjoyed said moments instead of constantly worrying and plotting for my future aspirations (of which, I still don’t know. How do you plan for what you don’t know??). In this environment, the point was to do better: to make mistakes and do better than them. Doing better, though, means to consistently be struggling.
My parents moved us to the suburbs when I was a baby. Land was cheap because it was a new development. They wanted to do more and be more for me than their parents did and were for them, specifically being better than my father’s parents. Growing up, our suburb grew from a developing community to the epitome of suburbia. We became the cake-eaters compared to the other suburbs in the area. Plenty of my parents’ friends and people who had been in similar situations as them moved to this area too. The social mobility accredited to these people allowed them to move, and so they moved into suburbs that were even better than the ones they grew up in.
Growing up was characterized by comfort and homogeneity. Mostly, there was comfort because of homogeneity. Everyone looked like me, lived like I did, or at least it appeared so. My parents kept me from want, provided me with whatever I wanted and if it was something unattainable for whatever reason (financial or because, like in the case of a unicorn, it didn’t exist), they would try to get me the next best thing and/or explain why I couldn’t get something. Robert Putnam finds that homogeneity is dangerous to societal relationships. The fact that my parents and their friends were all able to move to the suburbs and built their dream homes reflects on the nature of their society where they experienced greater access to social mobility, in part due to their mixed economic society. This built various social connections for them to capitalize on later in life. As they achieved the ability to move, they did. This implies that everyone who moved did so because they had the ability and that those who wanted to move to the suburbs but didn’t because of financial limitations or lack of appropriate connections were unable, thus homogenizing the suburban community to reflect people of perhaps varying backgrounds but similar levels of access to social mobility.
When the recession of 2007/2008 hit, I didn’t feel it. My parents did, they would talk about it and occasionally would have to deny me something (going to the movies or superfluous back-to-school shopping) but again would explain why and work to make sure I was comfortable. I think my family and I had an unspoken assumption that even through the worst of it, even if it got worse, we would be fine. My father is an accountant, people always need them, so he’d have stable employment. My mom worked in business, so that was a little rough but even then, there would always be stability. It wasn’t until late in high school, studying politics and history, that I found out this recession was the worst economic situation since the Great Depression. It truly never touched me the way it ruined so many Americans lives. I have my parents to thank for that.
It wasn’t until I was older that I understood my family was on the lower end of the economic spectrum of the community. I remember my father actually pointed out that we were the worst off in our neighborhood. We were okay but far behind the second poorest. Poorest is the wrong word, second least-rich. I never had to work during high school so long as I focused on academics and extracurriculars. My family can be described as middle class, possibly upper-middle class throughout other years. But this was nothing compared to the single-income family just down the street who bought our house as a second home when my parents moved, for their in-laws. Still, stability and appearance made for a lot of my comfort growing up. They continue to determine my comfort now.
College was never a choice for me. I was always going to college, especially once it became clear that I enjoyed learning and was good at schoolwork. My parents recognized the importance of a degree in competition for jobs. Both value education and wished they had gotten degrees and so they made sure I would never feel left out of that fraction of society. They emphasized taking hard classes, taking Advanced Placement classes to get college credit. They offer these classes in 9th grade, meaning when you’re in middle school you have to decide what educational route you want to go down.
I will be first generation to graduate from college. It doesn’t seem like a major deal to my extended family since I have aunts and uncles who have completed degrees but because my parents never did it is huge. My grandmother on my dad’s side didn’t complete high school and wanted her degree but she didn’t want a GED, she wanted the real degree, so she went back to high school with my dad and aunts to get her diploma. My dad went to trade school and got his CPA but he doesn’t see that as a true degree. There’s a better status association with a four-year degree over a two-year over trade school. Private versus public status also influences these perceptions and connotations.
I toured Drake University because I wanted an urban campus that was small (growing up in Minnesota, I was terrified of the size of the U of M). The minute I stepped onto campus I knew this was my dream school. This was the first school I toured (I toured 4 more) but it remained the best one for me. The downside was that there is no reciprocity between Iowa and Minnesota, not that that matters too much because Drake is a private school. That said, that was a major concern for pursuing higher ed: Drake’s private tuition was much more (almost double in some cases) that state schools in Minnesota.
I currently have $25,000 in college debt plus around $1,500 in interest. Then there is whatever my parents have taken out in loans plus that interest. I luckily had most of my tuition taken care of through scholarships and my parents’ fruitful saving techniques. Drake’s tuition while I’ve been here was anywhere from $40,000-$45,000 a year.
Average college tuition for a public school is $19,189 and for private tuition it is $39,529. Average debt leaving a four-year public university is $25,550, while the average debt for a private four-year college is $32,300. Clearly, I am in a better position than most college graduates: Drake’s tuition is higher than the average and yet I am walking away with less debt than the average.
There are restrictions to aid that prevent people from achieving upward mobility, like having a felony status (of which, the standard for varies from state to state) or a mobile computer and/or stable internet access. To apply for and verify eligibility of a student loan, you must go online to take quizzes and watch tutorials. Lac of access to these things disqualifies students from receiving federal funding for their future. Again, I am lucky. My citizenship status has not been questioned and my family and financial stability has propped open doors for me.
I found out recently that different fields have different expectations for interns. My best friend was talking about how much her internship paid. I was floored. I’d only ever come across one paid-internship and I figured it was because it was a special case. All other internships I’ve had or ever applied for or were even remotely interested in were always unpaid. I thought all internships were unpaid. I asked my friend about her other internships and found out that all the internships she’s worked or applied for or was interested in were paid for. She is in business and marketing. I talked to my boyfriend about this because I was upset, like why couldn’t I ever find paid internships? He’s also only ever had paid internships. He’s an accountant. Then I put it together: my only paid internship was a digital marketing (read “business”) internship while all the other ones were political, what I am “trained” in.
I had an unpaid internship in D.C. in 2017. I had to relocate to D.C. to work in the program. It was mandatory full time 30–40 hours. I (and by ‘I’ I mean my parents) had to pay for airfare to and back from D.C. I had to find and pay for housing (there was no assistance or even a recommendation list) which ended up being on George Washington campus because it was the only thing left open since the internship selected candidates late in the season. That cost about $3,000, half of which was paid at once and the other half pay a month later (using money from my graduation party and from working that year, and which wiped out my bank account and I still required assistance for some funding from my parents). Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with public transit and pay for that because I lived a 15-minute walk away from my job’s campus.
I worked as a business analyst for the digital marketing side of our intra- and inter-nets. Other interns there where from the area (Washington, Maryland, and Virginia). A few were graduate students and/or out of the military. One was working towards a law degree. Others, like me, were either in the middle of their undergraduate degree or just finished. Many lived with family members or friends, while others found cheap accommodations outside of the city. One other had to live in the same expensive housing plan as I did. It was obvious that some were at the internship just for the proximity to power (people who were always volunteering for extra jobs, had a shmoozy atmosphere around them). Others were there for experience, trying to build their portfolios and resumes. It astounded me that no one else was shocked at the internship: I was star-struck and so grateful to be there. It didn’t and still doesn’t feel real. The others fit right it, acted like this was no big deal, like they were used to it or expected it.
There is this assumption within my internship that shows how political internships are elitist: it is assumed people have access to resources or know how to access resources and that if they don’t, they shouldn’t be considering the internship. It is basically the socioeconomic version of “colorblindness”. Of course, everyone is eligible for these internships, but social factors (lack of finances or social networks) and restrictions to access (information and applications) prevent qualified people from applying. The fact that I had to move across country meant nothing to this internship. They needed us to work full time but did not provide resources for suggested housing or possible routes of funding for travel expenses. If I wanted to get another job to support the internship, I had to get it cleared with HR. Only a small percentage of Americans can easily afford to do these things and have to correct connections to make the process even easier on them. I think of all the people who don’t have the money to fly across the country, don’t have the connections to find cheap living arrangements or an ultra-flexible alternative job and wonder how many people are “disqualified” or who sell themselves short or are not invited to this arena because they do not have the resources to last. The only reason I got the internship was because of resources my university had to offer: without our career portal, I would never had known that these kinds of internships existed and I never would have applied. I just figured you needed to know someone to get in and that in my limited community, I didn’t know the right people. This even applies to politics once a person a person is legitimately within politics: the 2016 election was a big deal because one of the candidates was using small donations from everyday people to fund his campaign while another candidate had the money and resources and decided to jump in because “why not”.
Homogeneity restricts relationships and access to mobility for their kids, my generation, by creating a protective community in which there is support but once someone leaves the community there is a lack of relationships that makes this mobility difficult to manage. Putnam finds that people are unable to emphasize with people outside of their community, illuminating why people who don’t have the resources for internships don’t ask for them and assume they are not eligible for the internship. This lack of empathy also possibly explains why people view unpaid internships as patriotic and asking for paid internships as being to sheltered and being to selfish.
There is something self-sacrificing about going into governance. It is a civic duty to support and aid the government. The duty to serve the government stems from a communal bureaucratic utilitarianism. Therefore, people should be proud and happy to dedicate service to the country and in this regard shouldn’t have to be paid for something so enjoyable and inspirational. Others justify unpaid internships by noting that interns are still learning these positions, they cannot work at the professional level and thus should not be paid accordingly. Unpaid internships are particularly self-sacrificing and a civic duty because the intern is both learning to and actually helping the county at personal cost because they are not paid. When money is taken out of the equation, “choice” becomes the motivator. This is problematic because people who can afford unpaid internships use their position to get close to the seat of power and network. Those who cannot afford unpaid internships are viewed as not wanting it enough or not being motivated enough.
I was undecided when I started my undergraduate career. I am graduating a semester early with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Law, Politics and Society, with a minor in Religious Studies and an Arabic certificate. My career aspirations have changed throughout the years: high school history and government teacher, author, political science researcher in Africa, university professor in sociolegal studies, translator, POTUS, governor of Minnesota, state and federal senate representative, city management, parks and rec employee. I still would love to do any and all of these. Currently I am hoping to get into city management. I also am interested in pursuing Americorps’ Teach for America in which I would teach in underserved schools while simultaneously working towards a Master of Arts in Teaching. This would be the easiest and cheapest way to get a graduate degree. I’ve been struggling with another interest of mine: midwifery. I want to become a midwife after my sociolegal studies in undergrad made me aware of human rights concerns in American birthing practices. But that is at least another three years of schooling and I don’t know to afford another degree, one that is a radical change from my undergraduate work that tells me my undergrad was a waste. We will see.
