Three Simple Steps to Wealth
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By ESI 2 Comments
This post was originally on Biglaw Investor. I’m running it here today because I don’t think I’ve ever told the story and it’s an important one (I did tell an abbreviated story in My Jobs, College). Plus I have some Millionaire Money Mentors comments to add to it.
I don’t remember this ever happening, but it’s a story my mom tells now and then.
She was having a conversation with my high school algebra teacher (while I was in high school) about me when the teacher said, “I asked him what he wants to do for a career and he said he wants to make a lot of money. I have no doubt he’ll succeed.”
As I said, I don’t remember the story, but that sounds like me.
After all, I had been raised in a lower-middle-class family and while I had a great childhood, I knew I wanted a bit more in my lifetime.
That’s one factor that made me want to become a lawyer.
Of course there were others: the mental challenge, the fact that my favorite uncle was a successful lawyer, and my two wins in mock court (I was able to acquit two alleged murderers) added to my desire.
Throw in a dose of speech and debate training in high school and I was set to be the next Perry Mason.
So I set out for a small liberal arts college for my undergraduate degree. I figured I’d major in business to give me a one-two punch and that’s what I did.
Then in the midst of my junior year, right when I was studying to take the LSAT, I signed on to be an intern with a local lawyer.
This was going to be exciting! I would get to see the life of a lawyer up close and personal. Boy, was it going to be awesome!
Until it wasn’t.
Back in those days, the interns and new lawyers were grunts who researched precedents and the like to help the main lawyers with cases.
The was no glamour, there was no excitement, there was no interest — only boring days looking at books with type size I couldn’t even read today and reading court case after court case.
Now I realize there are many types of law and this was just one of them, but the experience was so bad that I started questioning my path.
I researched more about what a lawyer did (versus what I thought one did) and also talked to my uncle about his job. The results were not what I was expecting.
Most law work is quiet, behind-the-scenes, and monotonous (or at least that was my view). This was the exact opposite of what I wanted.
It was time to change paths.
So now I was in trouble.
I was attending a school known to send people on to graduate school but not known for finding them jobs. Unless I wanted to work for the state forestry service as a park ranger (i.e. ticket taker) for $18k per year. Yikes!
Thankfully I had a mentor offer me some great advice. He was my boss in the alumni office where I had an assistantship. He had been a successful businessman earlier in his life.
He asked me if I liked what I was doing in the office.
I said I did.
He told me that my job was basically marketing, so I should check out a marketing class.
I took one the first semester of my senior year and fell in love right away. A year later I was at a Big Ten school starting to work on my MBA.
The rest was history — a successful, enjoyable 28-year career that allowed me to retire at 52 with a few million dollars in the bank.
And it all happened because I took my dream internship and hated it.
Now life has come full circle and my daughter is a junior in college. We have been working on getting her an internship next summer.
For good or for ill, I hope the internship is as valuable to her as mine was to me.
As you might imagine, I’m a big fan of internships. Here are a few reasons why (if they’re not obvious):
The story above also taught me a few other lessons that impacted the rest of my career:
So if you’re a young person reading this or the parent, relative, or friend of one, please point them to this piece for consideration. Doing so just might help them land their dream job or avoid five decades in a career they hate.
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That’s the end of the original post. But there are some updates.
I recently thought of this story and posted the following in the Millionaire Money Mentors (MMM) forums:
An internship saved my life.
Not literally, but figuratively.
During my junior year in school, I took an internship with a local lawyer. I worked eight hours a week in his office, mostly looking up old law cases that he could use for trials/arguments and writing up a summary of them.
I learned one HUGE lesson from this job: I hated what lawyers did (for the most part). This was vital because up to that time I had planned on going to law school. But after this I switched directions and with the help of the alumni director got turned on to marketing — which has been a perfect career for me.
This is one reason I’m such a supporter of internships — they not only give you some good experience that you can put on your resume, but they also let you discover whether or not you really like the field you’re working in. For a 20-year-old, those are two GIGANTIC benefits!
I can’t state how glad I am that I never went to law school and went to business school instead.
My daughter had a similar experience – she wanted to work in DC, took an internship with a congressman, saw how crazy everyone there is, and changed her plans. Hahaha.
I spent a summer in DC myself…back when Reagan was president…in a very useful internship. I didn’t want to work in DC but just wanted to build my resume and this worked well at doing that.
I had one other internship – during the summer between my MBA years. I was so green that I didn’t ask what the salary was (or even if there was one), so when I got my first check for something like $2,000 I thought I had won the lottery! Hahaha.
Anyway, would love to hear what others think about internships (for yourself or your kids) and what internships you may have had.
There were many worthwhile comments in response and I want to share a few of those with you today, starting with this one:
Hands down my co-op (internship) was invaluable to me. There is zero chance I would be where I am today without having that leg up. I graduated from my bachelor’s with the equivalent of a year and a half to two years of real world full-time work experience. It also like you taught me what I don’t want to do which I think is more valuable than figuring out what you do want.
Also from the perspective of a hiring manager there is no way you could convince me to hire someone straight out of college who didn’t intern at least two semesters or Summers.
I have actively brought intern programs into my organization and converted a lot of interns to full time. These programs are great fun a way to give back and a way to stay young at heart.
And the next:
I had an internship in grad school that was very useful in building good work skills and my resume. I also did a summer research program as an undergrad which showed me I didn’t want to get a PhD and do lab work for the rest of my life.
My company hires thousands of interns every year and I believe about 60% or more of them go on to get hired as full time employees. From the other side sometimes interns are a lot of work for us, so I’m fond of the new trend (at my work) to hire them for 6 months vs. the traditional 8 week summer internship. I like to say that they barely can find the bathroom by the time the internship is over in the summer…With the longer periods you can really get a better balance of training them vs getting some work out of them.
And finally, this:
The real value is learning what kind of job to select after college. I interned at one of the oldest companies in our state. It was lightly staffed with engineers and most of them were older. They put me to work doing high level stuff even though I was just a kid. I loved it, and loved the people and could see they would age out leaving me a lot of room for advancement. I got seven other offers from Fortune 100 mega corps but I chose the small company and it turned out to be a great choice. It was just as much fun as the summer work and I stayed there for over thirty years rising to the top job running the company in my early forties. I highly recommend taking one or more internships during your college years. Or even after if you haven’t already figured out your dream job.
We are now in “internship season,” the time of year when college kids are looking for or finalizing their summer internship plans, so I thought running this post would be timely.
Anyone out there have kids (or grandkids) looking for or planning on an internship this summer or fall?
Filed Under: About, Career, Earn
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Steveark says
I knew what I wanted to major in by the time I was a freshman in high school. My math and science proclivities made chemical engineering a perfect choice. I did take an intern position during my college years and it led me to going back to that company for a permanent position even though I received seven other job offers from larger companies when I graduated. The value of the intern position to me wasn’t determining if I enjoyed engineering, I had long ago figured that out. But what it did give me was an inside look at a company where I realized that there was an age gap. If I took the job most of the engineers there would be retiring by the time I was ready to run the corporation, which is exactly what happened. It was the only company I ever worked for all the way from intern to retirement.
JP says
I applied for and got an internship at a world-renowned children’s hospital the summer before my senior year of nursing school. Thanks, mom, for finding out about it and encouraging me to apply! Like you said, many people referred to it as a “summer-long interview” and thankfully I loved the work and indeed was hired on full time after I graduated. Really not sure where I would have ended up if I hadn’t had the internship!
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