Why you should take a few months to do part time paid work while doing internships

There are people who say you should work endless hours and take absolutely any work that you can   These people say it doesn't matter what work you do, that earning money is more important.  They're the people who say people with university educations and qualifications should take jobs stacking shelves in supermarkets and settle for McDonald's or other equally lame and menial jobs.  My bet is that either these people who make these comments have no ambition or think that life is solely about money.  Either way they're the types of people who never had a passion in their lives.  I disagree that you should work full time in jobs you hate and that's what I'll be talking about in today's blog.

To set the record straight, I have a Diploma in Broadcasting, a Bachelor of Arts with a major in politics and a minor in Film, TV and Media Studies.  Once I'd finished my undergraduate study I worked for a while before doing post graduate study in journalism.  I earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Communications, half of the papers were journalism papers.

While I was finishing my studies I was working full time for a news agency but due a company restructure I left before redundancy and now I'm working part time casual jobs while I do an unpaid internship at a radio station.  Now I have been criticised by loads of people for making the decision not to go full time but today I want to explain why someone with passion and ambition may not go full time while they are pursuing their goal.

I don't have children, in fact the only expenses I have are rent, public transport, singing lessons and a couple of debts plus my phone.  That works out at $400 a week.  Due to Aussie wages being the highest in the world it means that if you're a young single like myself it is very easy to live on part time money - which on good weeks can be $600 before tax, about $500ish after tax.  You're much better to take the time when you're younger to work part time and do internships etc before you have commitments that prohibit you from doing so.  You see, you can always make more money but you can't always follow your passion.  If you're not in your field (depending on what it is) by a certain age then you can write it off that you will ever get into the field.  So while you may be broke for a few months or live basically for a few months it is much better to do this than to end up in dead end jobs for the rest of your life.

Unfortunately the majority of full time jobs are Monday - Friday so if you're doing an internship the fact is you can't work full time unless you want to end up in dead end jobs for the rest of your life.  The reality is, by doing an internship for 3-12 months, even longer if necessary you are gaining experience that is way more valuable to you than a wage would be.  The wage can come later.  You see, doing unpaid work is much like going to uni.  It's a short term financial cost but the opportunities it will create far outweigh the short term economic loss.

If you work full time in jobs you hate then the other consequence is that you cannot focus on what you're truly passionate about and if that is the creative arts then you need to flex those muscles and keep a foot in the door with your own projects and unpaid work for credible organisations.  The comments by some on the left that have been published in the mainstream media of late have totally misunderstood the value of unpaid work.  Sometimes the experience is way more valuable and as I'm highlighting in this post, if you're truly passionate about something then  you won't care what you're earning and will adjust accordingly.  Being willing to work for free gives you experience that you may not otherwise get and you are basically getting trained at no cost to the company.  It's a win win situation and I don't think people are at all getting exploited.  Nobody forces us to unpaid internships.  The real tragedy would be if the option to do unpaid work experience was taken away from us because we may not get opportunities to do what we're good at and passionate about.

If you had kids or a mortgage it would be a different story but while you're young and commitment free it's much better to take a few months where you work in part time paid employment so you can spend the rest of your time doing unpaid work, building up your experience and ending up better off in the long run.  When you have a talent in an area, there would be nothing worse than not fulfilling that destiny and those ambitions and you'd just end up miserable in old age. 

As long as you can pay your rent does it really matter how much you earn?  My answer is no, passion's way more important so if you need to, take a few months while you're young to work part time and do internships to get the experience that will give you a long career in the field you're passionate about.  An unpaid internship can also be very satisfying and keep your brain moving while you do dead end jobs you despise and it can reignite a flame.  It can give you the experience and the drive to follow what you really care about and to set goals and that is a really good thing.