How To Choose An Internship If You Don't Know What You Want To Do With Your Life

How do I choose an internship if I don't know what I want to do with my life?

That's what's so great about being an intern. You don't know what you want to do, so you talk to your parents. “Hey, do you know anyone who does this or does that? Do you know anyone who does anything like that?“ The chances are that they might. You can then go and meet with these people, and just have an informational interview. An informational interview is a great way to sit down with someone and learn more about what they do. Before you go to this informational interview, prepare some questions. Think about what you want to know, and just say “Hey, what do you do? What's your day like?” Don't even think about getting an internship yourself. Ask them about their life. Do they like what they're doing? What do they recommend? If you're saying to yourself during this informational interview, “Wow. I could see myself doing this.” Or perhaps it's not what I'm going to do for my entire life, but for two or three months during the summer, let me try it. Let me see. Let me get my toes in there. From dipping your toes, you might dive in and be like “ This is great.” If you don't know what you want to do with your life, talk with as many people as possible. Email as many people as possible. Say “ Hey, can I pick up the phone and talk with you for just five minutes?” Everybody likes to talk about themselves, so just ask them a couple of questions. People are so willing to help a young kid who's out there trying to figure out what they want to do. Play dumb. “Hey I don't know what's going on. I think maybe I'm interested in this, but I'm not really sure". It's a great opportunity to ask questions, because you don't want to be stuck five years down the road being like “So what do you do?”. You're already in that field and now you want to backpedal yourself out. It's very easy to jump in when you're young, but to jump out and then jump into something else when you're twenty five or thirty is a lot harder.