I was reminded this weekend of why I love the real estate section in the Sunday New York Times. A terrific article by Bobby  Allyn entitled Interns Find a Will, a Way, a Floor offers insight on how unpaid interns manage to afford living in New York City, their biggest expense, of course, being housing. As someone who had an unpaid internship in 1999 working in the ad sales department of CNBC.com in midtown, I know how crazy it sounds to move to the most expensive city in the country without a paycheck.  But as one intern says in the article, there’s nothing compared to the opportunity to apprentice in New York City – paid or unpaid. When you’re trying to build a career what matters is that you are making the right connections. You can look at is an investment and a cheaper alternative, in some cases, to going to grad school.

Luckily that summer of ’99 I received a housing grant from my University to pay for my sublet in Manhattan. I shared a room with another young woman in an NYU dorm, a bit of style cramp, but I couldn’t complain. My parents also gave me a small stipend to mainly pay for my subway card and food. (I pretty much ate Subway turkey subs for two months, and did as the intern in the article said: “load up on office snacks…and eat a big lunch paid for by the company…saving the leftovers for dinner.”

Additionally, I took a bus home nearly every weekend back to my parents’ house in Massachusetts. There I was able to stock up on free food, toilet paper and bottled water for my trip back to the City. I found it a bit depressing to be in NYC on the weekends with only $10 in my pocket, though now I know there was so much free stuff I could have done had I only been more of an explorer.  Hm. I guess You learn as you go.