The Bigger Picture
Every Babson student remembers their FME experience vividly. The good, the bad, and the ugly. No matter what your overall opinion of the experience was, everyone learned what it was like working for a non-profit. Not many people have put in the hours that we had to in the classroom and outside, trying to start a company from nothing and by the way, you’re not getting paid. This whole thing was for a grade at the end of the year. Why put a ton of stress onto yourself when you aren’t being compensated for your grief? “Never again,” I thought to myself.
Well, here I am. An unpaid intern, but this time I have 10 times more work and I’m putting in 40 hours a week as well. I don’t understand why I do this to myself. But then, I take a step back and a deep breath. But that only helps for a second and soon I’m right back where I was, wondering why I did this to myself.
Then, I think back to my orientation on my first day. My job here for the summer is to assist in UNICEF USA’s business process review and system evaluation and selection project. In short, I am helping trim the fat off the company and make it the most efficient it can be so that when someone donates a dollar to help save a child’s life, more of that dollar gets to that child. Over 90 cents of every dollar donated ends up being spent directly on UNICEF’s mission that every child in the world survives, thrives, learns, is protected from violence, has a safe and clean environment, and has an equitable chance in life. This project’s goal is to see how much more of that dollar we can get to help save more lives.
Suddenly, being an unpaid intern doesn’t seem like such a terrible concept anymore.
Of course, making money is great, but one summer of being a paid intern won’t have a significant enough impact on my lifetime as much as my work here will have for the future of this organization and children around the world. I hope that my time investment here will help foster a new approach for the company that will allow for more efficient processes that, in turn, will save more children’s lives than we previously would have.
Sometimes you must take a step back to realize the bigger picture in whatever you are doing.