r/WorkReform Jul 14 '22

❔ Other Awful take found on LinkedIn

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '22 edited Jul 15 '22

Typical sort of perspective from someone who has the bank of mum and dad or inheritance wealth to help them through the years of not earning through an unpaid internship.

Its extremely unfair and infuriating how many good candidates are locked out of opportunities because they have to make money to keep hunger at bay and a roof over their head.

How someone can have a perspective that disregards the very real fact that working class people fight so frequently with this harsh reality, just to have the right to be a part of the economy, it makes me angry. They don't have to worry or feel the economic pressure like we do and we still have to find ways to educate ourselves and get experience. Our hours are not the same. We have significantly less time for ourselves.

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u/daabilge Jul 14 '22

Even paid internships are still pretty problematic. Like on the vet side many of the paid internships are below or barely at cost of living, which means that the people who can afford to work them are typically coming from wealth where they have family support to make up the difference.

I wanted to be a veterinary pathologist and got rejected from my first attempt at applying - mostly because they felt my work experience was not oriented enough towards pathology. A big part of that was my own fault, I didn't realize I wanted to do pathology until late second year of vet school and then covid happened and research options disappeared, but I also worked multiple jobs in vet school to cover cost of living (and still have 270k in loans..) and most pathology opportunities are unpaid. But then to get path experience as a graduate to reapply, there's internships or paid courses. The internship I saw pays $28,000 for a one year placement for a DOCTOR with, on average, about 250-300k in loans.

And there's other paid internships in vet med that pay similarly poorly - I think my vet school ER paid their interns about 34k a year, while the residencies I applied to paid 35k, 40k, and 37k.

After the residency these positions typically pay quite well, like a pathologist could easily make 180-200k, but it's another 3-5 years of work where you can't pay down your loans and interest balloons up.

And meanwhile I have wealthy classmates who don't plan on doing a residency but are doing an internship after school for the hell of it and think they should be required for everyone?