No Time For Fun

Once upon a time, in the land of the silver screen, summer was reserved for hanging out and making out--preferably at the beach and not in that order. That was how Gidget found her Moondoggie, how Frankie and Annette learned beach-blanket bingo and how Grease's Danny met a girl crazy for him. Sure, those were movies, but when Danny waxed poetic about his nights of summer loving, nobody thought, "What a slacker!"

Compare Moondoggie to Lovelle Menzie, who just completed his junior year at Morehouse College in Atlanta. As a summer intern at New York City's Chase Manhattan Bank, he plans to fit right into the city that never sleeps. "We've been told that if we are given a project at 10 a.m., it may require that we work straight through for 24 hours until it's done," says Menzie. What's more, he had to fight for those 100-hour workweeks. Wall Street internships are so prized that it's not uncommon for students to steal application materials and journal articles from college libraries to keep competitors away. And no wonder: Wall Street interns can earn up to $700 weekly, and sometimes get bonuses of $2,000 to $3,000.

The lazy hazy days of summer now bear a distressing resemblance to the rest of the year--and the rest of your life. Students who once settled for stints as lifeguards, camp counselors or Gap greeters are scrambling for career-oriented summer jobs and high-profile internships, with an eye toward boosting credentials for college admissions officers or prospective employers. These are students with enough memory of corporate downsizing to know that the job market can be ruthless, and they're dazzled enough by tales of 24-year-old Internet millionaires to realize that the fast track runs year-round. "The job market is as strong as we have seen it in decades, but there's a signal pressure--a race to be more qualified than the next person," says Philo Hutcheson, a professor of education at Georgia State University.

More than 80% of new college graduates interned at least once in their university career, according to Samer Hamadeh, co-author of The Internship Bible. He estimates that the number of interns has doubled in the past decade. Peterson's Summer Opportunities for Kids & Teenagers contains 1,800 entries this year--internships, specialized camps and summer-abroad programs--nearly twice the 1995 number. Summer-school enrollment is on the rise, as are prep courses for the SATs; the Princeton Review got so many tutoring requests in the ritzy Hamptons this year that it had to rent a summer house to accommodate all the tutors. "It's getting pretty grim out there," says Dave Berry, president of College Prep Services, Inc. "Colleges want to see that high school students aren't sitting around watching Seinfeld reruns all summer."

Comic relief seems to be the last thing on the mind of teens like Michael Teng, who just graduated from high school in Palo Alto, Calif., and worked 40 hours a week last summer as a computer programmer. "If you are a student who is anticipating applying to selective colleges," he says, "it really isn't acceptable to do nothing." Tony Bialorucki, 18, of Toledo, Ohio, was a caddy before trading in his golf clubs for a toolbox last summer to help build an orphanage in Guatemala. "I didn't want to work in a mall or a restaurant," he says. "That's kind of worthless."

Some adults lament the growing intensity of kids' summertime pursuits. "I like the era of America when kids had summer off," says Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia. "They could stare at the clouds, run, jump, explore, do the roller coasters and Ferris wheels, fall in love, backpack, hang out." Creativity, he argues--that intangible, untestable good--is enhanced by allowing adolescents to pursue their own interests.

But it doesn't much impress a corporate recruiter. Companies can save on recruitment costs by trying out potential employees over a 10-week summer period. At the investment firm Lehman Brothers, half the college students who intern after junior year become permanent employees. Says Jim Roper, a recruiter there: "They get a look at us, we get a look at them, and it works out pretty well."

That wasn't the kind of sightseeing Amanda Sandoval had in mind for her fling this summer in New York City. A student at the University of Denver, she had planned on trips to Central Park, classes at New York University and lots of good books for her "last summer to hang out, be a kid." But after guidance counselors warned her that she had better shape up her resume, Sandoval made a last-minute search for a job, sending off applications to the parks and recreation department, the U.N. and even the sanitation department. No luck so far, but she could always try Rockaway Beach. We checked--there's an opening for a lifeguard.