To Externship or Not to Externship: How to Best Use Your Winter Break at Carleton

Where Have We Been?

Carleton’s winter break is easily one of the best parts of being a Carleton student. I assume that you, dear reader, have been looking at Carleton material previously. In that case, you will probably have seen some information about our winter break, which runs from the Monday before Thanksgiving until a few days after New Year’s Day. There are some self-explanatory reasons why this is a good thing, and one of the ones we always touch on on our tour route is Carleton’s externship program. For those who haven’t heard the speech yet (we would love to tell you in person or online!), externships are one to three-week internships over our six-week long winter break, offered only to Carleton students!

Before I continue, I want to clarify that externships are wonderful, I had an amazing time doing work over winter break, and the flexibility to work for 1-3 weeks leaves time to spend at home. However, I must admit that my favorite two winter breaks were in my freshman year and just this past winter. Why? Because I took the entire time to go home and recharge my batteries. The reasons this was beneficial at those very different points in my Carleton career are similar, but they have some key differences.

Why I Chose to Stay Home…

On tours, I have often heard someone ask, “Do you feel that the trimester system is too fast?” My answer has always been no. I categorize it as intense but not overwhelming. However, I would advise incoming students to be wary of the final two terms of freshman year. In the time that students at a typical school complete one semester, you will have already undergone one finals period and will most likely be wrapping up the midterms in Spring. I will admit that this increases the chances of burnout. The jump from high school to college is a lot, with this part being particularly tough. So, while it might seem appealing to take on those externships, I highly recommend recharging over your first break. After you’ve gotten used to it, those externships will still be there for the remainder of your time at Carleton, and you’ll make some amazing connections to maybe have an internship or job in the summer!

…And Why I Did the Same This Year

So why, after having all that experience with the system, did I decide to stay home and do as little work as I could over my last winter break? Right now, my main project for the term is COMPS. Comps is our senior capstone project. It is almost entirely self-guided, and one of the options for English Majors is to write up to 60 pages of creative prose. I’ve had my idea for my comps for years now, it’s a story close to my heart, and I refuse to look back on this process and have my first memory be of how stressed and burned out I was while completing it. After trying to little to no avail to get some work done around Thanksgiving, I put down the computer and hiked. I went to the mountains twice, saw a concert and a pro wrestling show, and read some of my favorite books. While it has made readjusting to school work a little bit harder, as I have had to get back in the swing of doing homework, I have attacked my comps with a lot more joy over the last couple of days than I would if I had struggled through it over the holidays.

Will’s (he/him/his) favorite thing about Carleton is the amount of open space the campus has, as it is a good reprieve from stress. He has seen the movie The Princess Bride at least 20 times, and can recite large portions of it! Outside of the classroom, Will is a member of CHOP, one of Carleton’s D3 ultimate frisbee teams, and is a member of the disc golf club and board game club.