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A UC Davis graduate held more than 10 internships, many of them unpaid.
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She eventually landed an internship at Nvidia and is now a director at an AI startup.
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Fiona Lee told BI that learning, not money, was her priority in these internships.
This essay is based on a conversation with Fiona Lee, Marketing Director of an AI startup. Lee graduated from the University of California, Davis in 2023. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
My mom raised me as a single parent, and I didn’t want her to pay for school. I had financial aid, but it only covers rent.
I wanted to save money and go to school, so I tried to scale my career.
I constantly compared myself to other top school students. I knew that if I wanted to stand out as a candidate, I needed internship experience—especially because I was a communications major, which didn’t seem like a very strong credential.
At university, I completed eight paid and two unpaid internships. The other two paid internships were during transfers to college. I did several internships to learn and increase my chances of getting a good job after college.
Interning through college
I wanted to gain more experience in big companies. A lot of students know Google, Meta, all these big companies, but UC Davis is a non-target school.
My freshman year I didn’t have much experience, but I actually applied to various unpaid internships. I put my high school experience — boba shop, piano teacher, dance teacher — and the skills it developed into an application.
An internship at an e-commerce store helped me learn Facebook ads and digital marketing. This allowed me to apply for other unpaid roles.
Eventually, my resume was filled with unpaid internships, but the companies didn’t know that because I didn’t tell them if they were paid or not. This helped me land my first paid internship at DocuSign in 2021. After that, one led to another – Intel, Nvidia, and more.
As a result, my grades were not great. I had a 3.1 GPA. It was a tough trade off. I had to decide whether to do badly at the internship or get a low grade.
I thought I wanted to do an MBA or a master’s degree. If I did, I would pay more attention to grades. But at that time, building my career felt more important, so I have no regrets.
At some point, I needed to be paid for my knowledge
I wanted to pivot from unpaid internships because there’s a point where you stop learning and you’re just working for free.
I wanted to keep learning. That’s when I move on to another internship.
When you work without much pay, you don’t feel motivated. At some point, you realize that you need to pay for the knowledge you have.
If the internship offers more opportunities – for example, if I have no experience – I will still take the paid internship. It is more of a stepping stone.
When you are very early in your career, the most important thing is learning, not money.
I don’t think the number of internships is the most important. It’s important to show what you did during them.
I felt a little self-conscious at first. Some of my friends joked that I was moving internships every three months.
But internships are usually short—about three to six months—so even if I wanted to stay longer, I couldn’t.
I also wanted to experience as much as possible. My goal was not to get a return offer since I was still early in my college years. My goal was to learn, impress, and build strong relationships with my managers so that I could return if I wanted to.
Denial and persistence
Got a lot of rejections to get an internship at Nvidia. I applied 13 times.
The first time I interviewed, I was a freshman with an unpaid internship, so my project wasn’t very effective.
I was initially turned down for the role, but that manager passed my resume on to another team, and that’s how I got the internship offer.
Many students wait until their junior or senior year and then start to panic. Opportunities don’t come to you – you have to seek them. Go out, cold email, network, and do whatever you can to stand out.
Try both startups and large companies. During college, aim for four to five meaningful experiences so you have options. Complete at least one internship each summer to produce something impactful for your portfolio.
Do you have a story to share about a tech career? Contact this reporter cmlee@insider.com.
Read the original article on Business Insider
