You are allowed to do nothing this summer.

A little reminder for the folks of NUS:

I don't know how often this needs to be repeated. It's not a crime to take time for yourself. Free time is magical. It's a time when you can imagine, create, dream, or if none of the above appeals to you, just relax and enjoy some much needed rest.

You are human.

You deserve rest.

You were never meant to take internship after internship before funneling yourself into workplaces to slave the rest of your life away.

You are absolutely allowed to have fun during the break. 

And if internships are not your idea of fun, you are allowed to skip it and not feel like a failure. 

If you like what you do, that's awesome! Go for as many new experiences as you like, life is what you make out of it. If that means doing an internship and if that is what you want, just do it. But if you're meh about what you're studying, please for the love of all things good, don't torture yourself by doing an internship just because everyone else is doing it. Try other things. Take a moment to plan it all out and see what you can do - hint, it doesn't have to do with academics. Do something else. Out of the ordinary. In a crowd of 1000 NUS students where everyone has some internship, if I were a recruiter I would look out for the students who have done things that are not an internship. In the end, recruiters are looking for humans, not robots. 

And if you plan on doing nothing at all, so be it. Enjoy your youth, you only live once anyway. You'll only be 20 once in your life. This beautiful moment will never happen again. So rather than wallow in self pity that you don't have an internship, rather than fret about having no job in future, breathe. And enjoy the present moment. You aren't just a worker or a student. You are human. 

Think of school as a tool and yourself as the craftsman, not the other way round. Mentorships, internships, enterprises and startups, volunteer work, arts and culture, social events - all of those are ways to make your life better. They are not the end goal, and they are not the only way to fulfill your vision. So yes, by all means, go for the internship! But only if it aligns with what you really want.

I see so many people using "pragmatism" as a catch-all term for "idk what I want in life so I just do everything to compensate for my lack of direction". It's drilled into us, by the system, the school, society, family, even friends. But then you're missing out on the big picture. It was never about pragmatism. It was about you, your growth and where you want to be in life. So let it happen. Sit there and write a new book. Draw something. Let your idea take shape. Or just let yourself rest. You aren't wasting time by not being in an office earning $6.25 per hour.

You are here in university for a reason. You are brilliant, imaginative, talented, passionate and powerful. You don't need a company name or a 5.0 GPA to prove that, what matters is that you are a wholesome human being who cares about the world and who wants to make a difference.

And if internships are not part of your roadmap towards making your difference, so be it. Don't do the internship.

- u/ShiningAway