This time last year, I was contemplating what my future in the sports industry would look like. I had just wrapped up my first year as the Silhouette’s sports reporter and though I gained a ton of valuable skills and experiences, I was really unsure if I wanted to continue as a sports writer.
Though despite my doubts, I saw the doors that opened for me through this job and I decided to give it another shot in my final year.
I took on this role because I knew that if I wanted to find a job in the sports industry, everything that I did outside the classroom would matter the most. Being a multimedia and communications student at McMaster has taught me a lot of the skills I need, but the practical aspects of the sports industry one can get at programs at Ryerson University or Brock University are not offered here.
So along with writing for The Silhouette I took on four major sports-related extracurriculars. From running women’s football on campus, to helping the men’s basketball team figure out their social media presence, I tried to get as much experience as I could.
This, along with my previous internship experience, allowed me to figure out what exactly I had a passion for. I knew that I could write, I had two articles every week for the last two years to prove it, but I also knew that it was not something I was passionate enough about.
Running women’s football gave me a chance to work out my organizational and operational skills. A major part of the sports industry is game operations. Although it is a bit different to what I am used to as a comms and media student, I have always had an interest in planning and carrying out projects.
This role had me overseeing over 150 students, both student-coaches and players, and organizing tournaments; it was no easy task. In my frustration I quickly came to realize although I once had an interest in sports operation, it was not something I envisioned myself doing long-term.
It was not until I was working with the McMaster men’s basketball team creating creative content that I discovered what I was truly passionate about. It combined the media skills I learned in class, my personal interests and my sports media knowledge.
Giving a team who struggled on the court an online presence that did not just reflect their losses was a fun challenge. We immediately saw the positive feedback in an increase in followers and activity.
Now that I figured out my passion, it all began to seem so simple. Apply to social media positions for different sport teams in organizations? I can do that no problem. Although it was not enough.
Part of looking for a job, especially in the sports industry, is through networking. This is something I have always struggled with, so it was something I challenged myself to do this year. I first met with Camille Wallace, digital media specialist for Team Canada, who reminded me how my job as sports reporter already helps me to build these networks.
As I had started the year before, I continued to interview alumni who work in the sports industry and found a mentor in Vanessa Matyas, Marketing and Media Manager at NFL Canada.
NFL Canada’s Marketing & Media Manager Vanessa Matyas on her journey from McMaster to her dream job, and how hard work and perseverance led her there. https://t.co/TiBu0xd8kq pic.twitter.com/Ln8gt6wVRd
— The Silhouette (@theSilhouette) March 11, 2019
Through her advice and help, I have been able to fix up the resume I used to see no flaws in, and even land myself my first dream job interview. Unfortunately for me, due to still being in school, I was unable to move forward in the interview process.
But with positive interview feedback under my belt, I am now ready to take on the job search by storm. I know it will not be easy, but I have been, and I am ready to work hard and use what I learned while at Mac in and out the classroom.
When I look back at the beginning of my journey four years ago, I never would have thought that I would be here today. Although I do not have it all completely figured out, leaving Mac with a sense of what my purpose is something I am grateful for.
As senior year comes to an end, I am extremely grateful that despite my doubts, I gave writing with the Sil another chance. Even though there were many times I felt like I was in over my head, I could not have imagined my senior year any other way.
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It’s that time of the year where a large majority of students are strategically avoiding the atrium of the McMaster University Student Centre. The campaigning period for the next McMaster Students Union president is currently underway and will continue until the end of polling on Jan. 24.
Elections for MSU president are held annually, and are voted on by the MSU membership. While this sounds fair on paper, this translates into the consistent underrepresentation of co-op and internship students during elections. These students, who are not technically MSU members, are not allowed to support presidential candidates which includes voting or being a member of a presidential campaign team.
This is especially concerning considering co-op and internship students make up a large per cent of McMaster’s undergraduate population, with some programs like the bachelor of technology mandating co-op. If graduating students are afforded the right to vote and influence the MSU, despite not being present to actually experience the changes themselves, it makes little sense to deny returning students the same rights.
The argument in defense of excluding these students is that they do not pay the MSU fee. For the 2018-2019 academic year, this fee was $573.07, paid by each full-time undergraduate student at McMaster University in addition to their tuition and other fees. Note that $230 goes towards the MSU Health and Dental plan where students have the option to opt-out.
While it is true that co-op and internship students do not pay MSU fees or tuition, they still are required to pay co-op fees. For example, students in the faculty of science are required to pay a $3050 co-op fee over three years, which includes a yearly $150 administration fee. Similarly, students from the DeGroote School of Business must pay around $900 to participate in the commerce internship program.
A solution could be to allow these students the option to opt-in to the MSU fee and thus become MSU members with all the rights and privileges afforded with MSU membership, including the right to participate in MSU elections. But should students be forced to pay the full MSU fee in order to be represented?
Other student unions like University of Victoria’s Students’ Society collect partial fees from co-op students. Payment of this partial fee allows these students to only access services that are relevant towards them. This includes access to the health and dental plan, ombudsperson, university bursaries and democratic participation in students’ society elections.
If a system like this was introduced to the MSU, it would allow co-op and internship students the ability to benefit solely from services and activities that pertain to them, while not unnecessarily paying for services which are less relevant to students away on placements like participating in MSU clubs. This could then essentially be a reduced version of the $130.26 MSU operating fee that full-time undergraduate students pay as part of their MSU fee.
Alternatively, the MSU can make it so that returning MSU members are afforded electoral rights without having to pay an additional fee. Co-op and internship students spend the majority of their degree at the university. They have most definitely paid MSU fees in the years preceding their placements and will continue to pay fees upon their return. Why should they be charged additional monies during their short term away just to be represented?
Students on co-op or internships are still returning students that deserve to have an input on their union’s representation. Whatever change is made for future elections, it stands that the current unfair treatment of co-op and internship students by the MSU is a disservice to us all.
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By: Sunanna Bhasin
I remember scrolling through endless lists of summer jobs last year trying to find something worth my time. I had specific criteria to fill when looking at potential job, the biggest one being a job that actually offered to pay me. Students want experience, yes, but most of us would like to pay off our student loans or help our parents out. Some of us would even like to save for post-graduation. So when I see unpaid internships plaguing job listings when I have bills to pay, just like any other working adult, I can’t help but clench my fists at the blatant disregard for the hardworking, often loan-bearing post-secondary students.
Unpaid internships are a means of manipulating post-secondary students into doing free labour. Students are told that they need real-life work experience to get anywhere after graduation, and so they feel compelled to take whatever they can get. However, there are students who are struggling to pay their tuition and still require that important experience. Should they be expected to compromise and work for free? Companies who leech off unpaid internships are well aware that students will likely work without complaint because they are looking for reference letters and likely hope to receive a full-time job offer at the end. Companies may also exploit their interns by giving them gruelling tasks that may not provide them with the skillset they’re looking for, or set ridiculous hours for students who are often not in a position to reject them.
Economically speaking, it makes little sense that companies would want to have students work for free. Efficiency wage theory states that firms that pay efficiency wages, or wages that are higher than the market equilibrium or average, do so in order to avoid shirking on the job, reduce turnover, and attract productive employees. There is the possibility that students won’t neglect their job because they are looking for other rewards, such as the aforementioned reference letter (so that they can get a paid job in the future). However, the third point about attracting productive employees is out the window. Just as I scroll past unpaid internships, I’m sure there are many others who refuse to work for free. These are students who would potentially make very valuable employees.
The unpaid internship is a loophole in Canada’s labour laws. The minimum wage laws do not cover every single type of employment, and internships happen to be one of them. This needs to change. If a company is making profit, it has no right to ‘hire’ individuals to work for them without pay. Using the label “volunteer position” in place of “unpaid internship” does not suddenly make the practice okay. Volunteer positions should exist only at non-profit organizations because they don’t have a means to pay all employees. It is ridiculous to be able to take advantage of students who need experience in a certain field but also bear the burden of debt on their shoulders. Students should be able to obtain valuable work experience while at the same time making money to put towards continuing education or to pay off existing bills.
Ultimately, the unpaid internship is a means of exploiting students by perpetuating the notion that experience should be their primary concern and that everything else should be secondary, when in fact, students have real financial worries that need to be addressed while they are still in school, rather than later in life, when they are knee-deep in debt.
The years spent in university are often said to be those where we first come face-to-face with the “real world”, characterized by a transitioning period from teenage angst, to even more angst, to grappling with who we are and, finally, shaking hands with the real world as the person we want to be. A myriad of experiences will come together to shape us into this person. It does not happen overnight, nor will it happen easily, but each of these experiences is vital in challenging us to discover who we really are.
The key word here is challenge. Highlight this word. Cut out this word. Be friends with this word. Because to overcome something that you are afraid of is to be able to look back and say, “I persevered, and now my mark is here.”
And these people who have left their mark, despite challenges, are all around us. Some write about it, some talk about it, some wait for the right moment before discussing it at all. McMaster University is the home to a plethora of individuals with such stories. But the story of Lisa Pope is one we are privileged enough to share with you, and, in fact, it’s not so much a story as it is an invitation to challenge yourself.
Lisa Pope, a graduating Honours Life Sciences student, dedicated her summer to the Kalu Yala Independent Study Abroad and Entrepreneurial Internships in Panama this past summer. Drawing people from across the world, Lisa was one of the only individuals from Canada. This diversity, however, encouraged the integration of distinct ideas that could build towards the common goal that was uniting them all: the creation of Kalu Yala, and thus developing the world’s most sustainable town.
The program is incredibly unique among international outreach initiatives in that it gives each team member an opportunity to be highly independent in how they choose to take part in the creation of Kalu Yala. Lisa was a member of the Agriculture team, made up of thirty students who came to get their hands just about as dirty as an outreach program can get them. Living in a jungle for three months, all while putting in both labour of the body and mind into a personally developed initiative, can take physical and psychological tolls on any team member. Lisa, however, took on a challenge perhaps more brutal than the typical member due to a recent diagnosis with symptoms of Crohn’s disease,
Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease, where those affected are subject to severe abdominal pain, bowel disruptions, and even malnutrition. Given the strenuous nature of this program, another set of challenges could appear more repellent than enticing; instead of allowing her symptoms to hold her back, Lisa used her pain as a catalyst for unparalleled personal growth.
“I’m 23 years old living with a chronic disease and it’s something that’s never going to go away,” said Pope. “At this point, you decide to live your life or not, and this was my summer to do that. I decided to go and be in control of my disease.” In a location far removed from any Western world comforts or distractions, Lisa delved into a project that would eventually lead to a 75-page document, building a vast medicinal garden with her own hands, and leaving behind her own mark in a community that will forever leave an indelible imprint on her.
By planting over 300 different edible species of plants and trees, the impact her project will have upon the community in ten, or even five years, is momentous. Approximately 150 people will be fed daily as a result of her own hardships and hard work. And yet, perhaps the most striking message Lisa has taken home with her is not only the acceptance of failure at Kalu Yala, but also the desire for it.
“We love to fail at Kula Yala,” Pope said. Coming from a Science degree, where marks are snatched up without a second thought for any mistakes, and there is no gray area between the black and white of correct or wrong, this was a breath of fresh air. To fail was to succeed, and this paradoxical message can resonate with most students as wholly liberating. With failure, the members of Kalu Yala would not look at such a position as the defeated finish line, but rather an opportunity to start again, and allotting their knowledge of what won’t work as a propelling force towards success.
“If that means shooting for the stars and failing, that’s fine,” said Pope. “We shot for the stars and we realized that didn’t work so well, so we just have to figure out what we can do next time to make it better.”
In an eight-hour day, with four spent in the morning working alongside a director of the team, and the afternoon dedicated to the dirty work, there were three unmistakable qualities of the interns at Kalu Yala Independent Study Abroad and Entrepreneurial Internships: passionate, positive, and pursuing. Lisa Pope is an embodiment of such qualities, and although her self-proclaimed “invisible disease” has inevitably placed a series of unforgiving obstacles in her path, these qualities are in the foundation of the new path she’s building herself.
Every path a student will take in university is distinct from the next, and the obstacles just as varied, but the lesson to be taken from Lisa Pope and Kalu Yala is that no challenge can act as a barrier to leaving your mark in the world, but that challenges are forces that will leave your mark even more palpable.
