The interns descending on the city this summer have a leg up, in some ways. Influencers on social media may help them figure out how to dress business casual, for instance, or point them in the direction of trendy restaurants.
But many of these college students and recent graduates are short on cash, dealing with roommates (in some cases, parents and grandparents) and hustling to realize a version of New York that has danced across their social media feeds.
In reality, after work they tend to pass out watching “Love Island USA.”
The cross-section assembled here — who landed internships in finance, marketing, law and social justice work, among other fields — are just diving in.
The Finance Intern Hitting Pilates and Waiting for Pancakes
Mya La’Pierre, 20
Permira intern, $31/hour
Between market research assignments, Ms. La’Pierre, an intern in private equity at Permira Advisers on Park Avenue, gets career advice from full-time employees over coffee and Sweetgreen.
“Your network is your net’s worth — that’s something that everyone talks about at Howard,” said Ms. La’Pierre, 20, who is a finance major at the historically Black university.
Outside business hours, she waits in line with friends for the internet-famous pancakes at Golden Diner in Chinatown and takes the ferry to Brooklyn Bridge Park. (Her only regret so far is trying to go for a run through Times Square, which was too crowded.)
She and the other Permira interns are still trying to wrangle some after-work plans: “We keep talking about doing golf,” she said. But at the end of each day, she returns exhausted to her crash pad, the dorms at New York University, for some TV. “‘Love Island’ is popping right now, so I’ll watch my episode of ‘Love Island’ and then I’ll knock out,” she said. — Callie Holtermann
The Fashion Major Loving Her Time in the Beauty Closet
Harper Evers, 22
Foundation intern, unpaid
Ms. Evers, who studied fashion merchandising at Mississippi State University, commutes from Greenwich, Conn., two days a week to Foundation, a communications firm that specializes in beauty brands.
At work, she spends much of her time combing through social media looking for influencers who could be a good fit for brand partnerships and taking stock of a Wonka-esque wonderland of creams and serums in the beauty closet. (Sometimes, she sends her college friends freebies.)
The internship is unpaid, but Ms. Evers, 22, is receiving academic credit to complete her undergraduate degree so that she can start a grad program at the Fashion Institute of Technology this fall, she said. The gig also covers some of her train fare.
As she ate a $20 salad from a cafe near Foundation’s office in Brooklyn on a recent afternoon, she added that her mother and grandmother were “very generous,” too.
She and her fellow interns have discussed grabbing drinks, but plans have yet to materialize. Besides, back home in Connecticut, dinner is at 7, sharp. — Madison Malone Kircher
The Legal Intern Who Scrambled After DOGE Cuts
Anuva Wardah, 20
Queens County District Attorney intern, unpaid but receiving $16.50/hour and a $1,000 stipend through grants
The summer is not going exactly how Ms. Wardah planned.
A rising senior at Stony Brook University, she was accepted to the Department of State’s prestigious U.S. Foreign Service Internship Program in the fall. But a few months later, she received a startling email: Her internship offer had been rescinded, slashed as part of the federal hiring freeze championed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Over spring break, while her friends relaxed, Ms. Wardah scrambled to find a new summer plan. “I felt defeated,” she said.
After sending in more than 100 fresh applications, she managed to land an internship in the Queens County district attorney’s office, where she writes case summaries as part of the intake and assessment team. So far, there have been a lot of parking infractions and the occasional petit larceny. She has been surprised to discover that most of her colleagues do not take a lunch break.
Unlike her original gig in D.C., this internship is unpaid and does not provide housing. So Ms. Wardah is living with her parents in Jackson Heights, Queens, an arrangement she described as “claustrophobic yet wholesome.” — Callie Holtermann
The Native New Yorker Armed With Animal Trivia
Tiago Uddin, 18
American Museum of Natural History intern, $2,500 monthly stipend
On a Wednesday in June at the American Museum of Natural History, Tiago Uddin was making his way down a dimly lit hall when a visitor stopped him to ask if the museum had a Spinosaurus on display, a dinosaur that has been featured in the “Jurassic Park” films.
Without missing a beat, Mr. Uddin, 18, replied, “Unfortunately, we don’t have a Spinosaurus.”
Mr. Uddin, a rising sophomore at Hunter College studying animal behavior and psychology, spends most days answering these types of questions.
Each morning, he wakes up around 7 a.m., styles his bouncy curls and puts on his uniform, a bright blue museum-branded polo shirt. Mr. Uddin lives with his parents and younger sister in Howard Beach, Queens. Most mornings, he has breakfast at home or grabs something by a nearby Dunkin’ before hopping on a bus to two subway trains, the last of which drops him off at the museum’s entrance. — Gina Cherelus
The Marketing Intern Being Paid to Party
Jolie Chen, 23
Furtado Global intern, $20/hour
As 2000s hip-hop music thumped in the middle of the afternoon on a rooftop in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, Jolie Chen fumbled with part of her intricate camera setup.
The D.J. had just made a transition from Whitney Houston’s melodramatic “I Have Nothing” to Soulja Boy’s “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” eliciting energized reactions on the dance floor.
Weaving through the crowd, Ms. Chen, who recently graduated from New York University with a degree in music business, recorded people dancing in a sea of orange and yellow, the dress code for this Juneteenth party. Later, her footage would be cut into compilation videos for social media, which have made Club 1BD, the party series known for throwing events in people’s New York apartments, go viral.
Ms. Chen, 23, is also a musician, singing and playing piano for the jazz and R&B songs she writes. But, she said, she was not “100 percent sure” she was going to make it as an artist.
“I’m always really hard on myself,” she said, adding that her parents, who work in the restaurant industry in Guangzhou, China, do not always understand her creative pursuits. For now, she is going to give the marketing side of the industry her best shot.
“I’m on a time crunch here,” said Ms. Chen, who has a visa. “I’m trying to level up my game.” — Sadiba Hasan
The Crypto Workaholic Too ‘Nerdy’ for the Club
Anish Goel, 21
Uniswap intern
Growing up, Mr. Goel developed a precocious love of research. At 14, he studied protein behavior in neurodegenerative diseases in a lab at the University of Ottawa. At 16 — stuck inside during the Covid-19 pandemic — he changed his focus to computational neuroscience, and even had a research paper published. Now, as a 21-year-old rising senior at Caltech, Mr. Goel has caught the start-up bug. This summer, he’s a data science intern at Uniswap, a cryptocurrency exchange. (He declined to share his compensation.)
It’s hard to pry him out of the office. “I could easily do this 24 hours a day,” he said.
And yet, the call of the city beckons, a least a bit: “There’s this museum I went to on Friday. The Met I think? It’s very nice.”
Before his internship ends, Mr. Goel hopes to explore the city a bit more — Brooklyn Bridge and a boat tour are both on his list. One thing he does not plan to do much of is discover New York’s nightlife.
“I’m not really going to bars or clubs. I guess I’m too nerdy for that,” he said. “By the time we’re done with work, I’m just so tired.” — Joseph Bernstein
The Assistant Balancing Two Gigs and a Boyfriend in Texas
John Riley Schultz, 21
Neely Creative intern, unpaid
So far, Mr. Schultz, an advertising major and a rising senior at the University of Texas at Austin, loves everything about the slice of life he’s carved out for himself in New York.
As the spring semester wound down, he put his stuff in storage in Austin and sublet an apartment in Stuyvesant Town from a friend of a friend. Since it’s near the L train, he has an easy commute to the unpaid internship he started last month at Neely Creative, a boutique production company.
“This room is bigger than my room in Austin,” said Mr. Schultz, 21, standing by his bed. Nearby were the prints he had hung with command strips and a knockoff Labubu doll, or “Lafufu,” he had bought in Chinatown.
Although he is far from his new boyfriend back in Texas, he has long had his hopes set on a New York City internship. “I love the hustle of the city,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to that culture.”
Mr. Schultz is also studying at his university’s Manhattan campus and working remotely for a real estate development firm in Austin, which pays him about $17 an hour. (He dips into his savings and relies on some help from his family to make his $2,300 monthly rent.)
“I can’t live off that in the city,” he said of the wages for his remote job. “But it’s a little extra cash in my pocket, which I appreciate.” — Gina Cherelus
The Social Justice Intern Living With Her Boyfriend
Anayeli Torres, 20
The Remedy Project intern, $6,000 stipend from college
It was 99 degrees on the hottest day in New York since 2012, and Ms. Torres arranged an assortment of snacks on a picnic blanket in Battery Park. She had just finished her work day at her office nearby and was waiting for a friend to arrive.
“I think people in New York are kind of dramatic about the heat,” said Ms. Torres, 20, who is from a small town in Illinois.
This summer, she is interning at The Remedy Project, a prison reform nonprofit that helps incarcerated people file formal complaints about human rights violations.
Ms. Torres, a rising senior at Barnard College who hopes to attend law school, was excited to have her first “big girl job” in New York. “It feels like I’m actually doing something,” she said.
The internship is unpaid, but she received a $6,000 stipend from Barnard. She plans to save most of it to pay for expenses throughout her senior year. To save money on rent, she has been staying with her boyfriend in Roselle Park, N.J., commuting by PATH for about an hour.
When she decided to move to New York for school, her parents, who had not gone to college, told her she’d have to support herself on her own.
She was not deterred. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could maneuver the real world by myself and build something for myself independently,” she said. — Sadiba Hasan
Joseph Bernstein, Gina Cherelus, Sadiba Hasan, Callie Holtermann and Madison Malone Kircher contributed reporting.
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