For last summer's college break, I was looking for work that would lead to lots of "networking" and "opportunity." I ended up at a retirement home, washing dishes at minimum wage for sixty hours a week. I trained and was then replaced by a deaf, mentally challenged gentleman.

This summer, I'm an intern at an international, multi-billion dollar company. I'm not sure exactly how this happened. I do know it started on the Internet. I blogged about a product I liked-right as the product's creators simultaneously started their initial online advertising campaign.

Ah, summer-the glorious, lazy days when we elderly folk try to find glorious, lazy millennials to do our bidding. (Late summer is when we old people complain when they go missing on drug benders and/or paid work.) This year, we took the most passive approach to summer interns: we took everyone who randomly applied! Completely self-selecting! And yet, a great crew. I asked each of these four young people to introduce themselves to you fine readers and to send in their most summery photo. [N.B. None of their presumably helicoptering parents even wrote their bios for them! Maybe the kids are alright?]

A recent Times article on the restrictiveness of summer internship guidelines painted a certain picture of those students for whom summer is a time for building one's resume-for the students with whom the average Sunday Styles reader is acquainted. Writing a trend piece on the summer internship, or the youngs in general, however attractive a poster child any wistful art-history major locked out of art-industry positions might be, is an impossible thing to do.

I should know-I tried to write one, having pitched and reported a story that was killed for its narrative drift, its lack of hook. The experiences students encounter when arranging summer work are [...]