A L S O_ T O D A Y

Internship Database
Introducing Ivory Tower's media internship database

Comics
Dark Hotel: Things get kinky in the party house on Russian Hill

T A B L E_ T A L K

"Self-taught": Is it a myth or real possibility? Sound off on teaching yourself in the Education area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Take your thinking elsewhere!
By Camille Paglia
While academia disembowels itself with theory's blunt knives, young scholars must still pursue intellectual livelihoods outside the ivory tower
(10/21/98)

Thursdays at the Clambucket
By George Paul Csicsery
Thirty-one years after he was beaten by police in a notorious anti-war protest, a former campus radical goes back to meet his enemies and learn their side of the story
(10/19/98)

Survival of the earliest
By Lori Gottlieb
Competing for grades is one thing. But facing off for parking spaces means all-out war
(10/16/98)

Geometry and hot pix
By Chris Colin
Returning home from college, a young man is caught between his troubled younger brother and X-rated Web sites
(10/14/98)

Financial roulette with Sallie Mae
By Kristina Blachere
Make no mistake, the corporate mistress of student loans will get you in the end, but in the meantime you can play her at her own game and sometimes win
(10/12/98)

S A L O N
E M P O R I U M
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Monica Lewinsky beat me out of an internship

---------

--------------The man who could have saved the dignity of
----------------------------the White House offers practical advice.

BY ROLF POTTS | In the early pages of his novel "Libra," Don DeLillo declares that his investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald's persona will "follow the bullet trajectories backwards into the lives that occupy the shadows, actual men who moan in their dreams."

Were DeLillo to write a similar, intrigue-filled tale about Monica Lewinsky, the trajectories (so to speak) of the Clinton sex scandal would eventually lead to me.

Indeed, I am a man who occupies the shadows. I am a man who moans in his dreams. I am a man who -- in an extremely indirect way -- could have saved the Clinton presidency a lot of trouble.

On a chilly night back in February 1995, I was busy filling out an application for a summer White House internship. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a 22-year-old Californian named Monica Lewinsky was doing the exact same thing. Like Lewinsky, I was ambitious, hard-working and fascinated by politics. Like Lewinsky, I attended a small, private college in Oregon. But whereas Lewinsky had a mediocre academic record and had appeared in a national publication declaring her passion for soap operas, I had a flawless academic record and had appeared in a national publication for organizing a community service project in suburban Portland. On paper, I was clearly the more attractive candidate.

But, as history has long since noted, Lewinsky won a coveted intern position at the White House and went on to forever change the Clinton presidency. I, on the other hand, was left with nothing to offer history save an empty mailbox and my own confusion.

What had happened to me? How had my good grades and good standing failed me? What did Lewinsky have that I didn't?

At a very basic level, Lewinsky had a Beverly Hills socialite for a mother. Beverly Hills socialites, as everyone now knows, are a great resource if you need access to influential Democratic fund-raisers like Walter Kaye. My mother, on the other hand, is a second-grade teacher for the Wichita Public Schools. This is a great resource only if you need something laminated.

But deeper lessons resonate from my failure to land a White House internship. In spite of my own sad story, scores of non-politically connected young people land White House internships every year. Furthermore, college students and recent graduates also find internships at places like the United Nations, the National Forest Service and Oregon Public Radio without the help of nepotism. Since I also applied to and was rejected by all of these institutions in 1995, I was left wondering if my failure to land a decent internship wasn't part of some greater conspiracy.

Why hadn't my superior grade-point average and glowing extracurricular record made me a shoo-in for these positions? Who was behind this? Kenneth Starr? Linda Tripp? The military-industrial complex?

Three years of retrospect and experience has given me a pretty good idea. For starters, good academic standing does not count for much in the days of grade inflation. Add to this the fact that nearly everyone has some sort of extracurricular nugget to put on a résumé, and you get a better idea of how ambiguous the selection process can be.

But perhaps more than anything, internships are not standardized academic contests: Internships -- whether they be for the White House or a greenhouse -- are simply practical opportunities for young people to experience a professional environment in exchange for menial work. Thus, a wise internship applicant should rely less on scholastic merit and good citizenship than on a clear understanding of what he or she is getting into. In other words, not only should potential interns research the institutions they wish to work for, but they should also attempt to learn as much about their specific duties as possible. An application that has been subtly tailored to this information stands a much greater chance of being accepted.

A big problem with my White House internship application was that I tried too hard to make myself stand out. My résumé was eclectic and quirky; my personal statement flouted convention to the point of being entertaining. And while the internship coordinators might have enjoyed the diversion, I was giving them too many excuses to toss my application aside in favor of candidates who had marketed their strengths to actual White House intern tasks of selfless drudge work and political elbow (or what have you) rubbing.

Internships are not, after all, designed to arbitrarily reward creative people; they are designed to let students get a taste of the real world without disrupting it too much. Thus, an internship application should not read with the unpredictability of a Quentin Tarantino script, but with the pre-marketed verve of a Syd Field-formula blockbuster. My White House application essay was essentially a wink-wink nudge-nudge humor piece on the futility of party politics, when it should have been a well-crafted declaration of all-purpose patriotism. My résumé joyfully pointed to the random versatility of being a summer-camp backpacking instructor one year and a TV newsroom intern the next; it should have blandly emphasized that I'd honed by people-management skills on a cast ranging from unreasonable teenagers to irate call-in viewers. Had I taken a few moments to simply consider the mind-set of my audience, I might have realized this.

I now work in the English department of a Korean technical college, and I review job applications from young Americans each semester. Since I am accountable to my bosses for all of my recommendations, I have to select applicants who I believe will be patient with low-level English learners, flexible within an Asian work hierarchy and willing to work long hours for mediocre pay. Applicants who list glowing achievements and extensive leadership experience often get passed over for those with humbler work experience and proven adaptability. In the same way, a given intern's skills -- even at the White House -- must always match the (often unglamorous) challenges of the intern job itself. Interns are expected to observe the workplace, after all, not revolutionize it. (Although Monica Lewinsky seems to offer a vivid exception to this rule.)

A final lesson from my internship failings of 1995 is that institutions look for work history patterns among applicants in the same way that detectives look for killing patterns among serial murderers. As much as anything, I suspect the White House rejected me for the likes of Monica Lewinsky because -- at age 24 -- I'd had no hands-on experience in politics. Nor did I have organized social-agency experience to offer the United Nations, scientific field experience to offer the National Forest Service or first-hand radio experience to offer Oregon Public Radio. I'd spent my early college days trying new things and being a jack-of-all-trades, and this lack of consistency no doubt left me looking a bit flaky on my résumé. A person who is dedicated to politics as a freshman ups his chances of landing a White House internship as a senior. Considering that my freshman year was dedicated primarily to rock climbing, my internship rejections begin to make more sense.

These days -- thanks to the luxury of hindsight -- I get a Walter Mittyish sense of pleasure from imagining my application being melodramatically flung from the acceptance pile moments after Walter Kaye pulled the fateful strings for Lewinsky. But regardless of how my application packet met its demise, it still stands as a good example of how not to apply for an internship.

"Destiny," DeLillo wrote in "Libra," "is larger than facts or events." For Lee Harvey Oswald, this might have been true. But for the rest of us, destiny sometimes comes down to how we choose to present the facts and events.
SALON | Oct. 23, 1998

Rolf Potts is a English teacher living in South Korea. He has written for Wanderlust about Las Vegas and Korea.