I am in year 1 in business school and a lot of my friends are planning to go for internships during this summer break. Should I be doing that? Is there a need to?

Internships is a great introductory to the working life you'll be getting into once you get out of uni or perhaps it'll be a wake up call that drives you to go create your own business. Either way, it's a good learning experience for a lot of people plus what other productive things are you looking into doing anyways?

Hey, I what Jacob mentioned about "what you want in the four years of your university life" is really the key to this dilemma.

Perhaps one way that you can look at it is:

• Would you want an additional chance to try a different industry?

• Would an internship in y1, help me stand a better chance for subsequent internships in y2 & 3? considering that more reputable firms will be more competitive to get into their internship programmes and past experiences would be an additional boost to your resume

Otherwise, spending your time on developing other skill sets or making experiences through camps or organising committee during your year 1 summer is also not a bad choice (: YOLO!

Generally speaking, there are more pros than cons for taking up a internship during year 1 summer. However, just because many of your friends are doing it doesnt mean you have to do an internship. In other words, one should not be doing an internship just for the sake of doing it. Moreover, by doing multiple internships doesnt also guarantee you a full time job if your internships are not relevant - there are people who gotten themselves full time jobs with only one internship .

Personally for me, I did a total 3 interships during my uni days. During my year 1 summer, I didnt have any internship. Reason is because after graduation I know I will be working for life, so therefore, I decided to make full use of my year 1 to make more friends by joining all the camp activities.

If you were to ask me, am I worried given that some of my peers are doing an internship at year 1? Yes it did worry me, but nonetheless, I did not regret my action by joining camp activities in year 1.

Now, you have to decide what is important to you, and there is no right or wrong. Once you graduate from uni, you will realise no matter what you do in your uni days (somehow) make sense. Like what Steve Jobs said, you can only connect the dots by looking backwards.

All the best :)

Yes, you should, you need to, you have to, and you must.

More experiences make you more employable without having a fantastic GPA (you may be surprised that not many companies actually look at GPA).

Also, those internships can be a 'guinea pig'. You may think you like marketing, but once you try it, you found out you don't like it. No issue with that, you can try HR next time, then finance, then sales, etc...

You have to keep trying new things out to know what really suits you, and the only way to achieve that is through having multiple internship experiences.

Plus, the world is full of uncertainty. Many undergrads' internships got cancelled due to Covid-19, or worse still, they couldn't find any coz no one is hiring anymore. Touch wood, but you can't be sure that the same shitty situation wont happen again in 2021, 2022, 2023, and you will regret your 'I have 3 more years to do internship'.

So, please go and take the summer internships. Not just summer, do the winter internship as well, during your school term take a part time internship as well if you can juggle between work and studies.

I am in my year 3 in NTU and I have already done 5 internships, excluding my internships in Poly and while I was waiting to enroll to NTU.

Bottom line: take up as many internships as you can, and you will see yourself shine and stand out from the sea of candidates.​​​