School of life should drive internship choices

By the time most people reach the stage of considering an internship, logic dictates that they know what direction they're heading in, and what they want to do for a living after college.

But this isn't always the case. Students change their minds occurs more often than their parents and advisers may think (or feel comfortable with). According to Penn State's Major Decisions, " ... up to 80% of students entering college admit that they're not certain what they really want to major in, even if they've initially declared a major.'' Nearly half of all college students change their area of focus at least once.

College is a time for trying on different suits, so to speak, but given the ever-increasing costs of higher education, there exist myriad pressures for students to figure out what they want to do with their lives -- and quickly. The concept of learning for the sake of learning seems to have gone out of vogue. (Perhaps driven by economic realities, universities seem to have evolved into career factories as opposed to temples of knowledge; whether you view this as a good or bad advancement is completely subjective and perhaps a topic to be taken up with your philosophy professor.)