New York University freshmen are spending thousands of dollars on a weekend trip to sunny Florida, but it's not what you might think.
This college student pays a lot of money to spend his weekends working instead of relaxing on the beach.
Big Apple college student Vincent Campanaro, who flies to Florida every weekend for his internship at the Ritz-Carlton, Naples, estimates the trip will cost him more than $10,000 when his six-month gig ends next month.
“It costs about $500 a week to go round trip to Naples,” he said on Fox Business' Barney & Company last week. “Naples is pretty expensive, so it's really not a dime.”
“But it's not easy,” Campanaro pointed out. “In fact, there have been several times where I have had to sleep at the airport or book a completely different ticket because the price of a flight has increased.”
He reportedly flew from New York after classes ended at 12:15 p.m. on Friday, flew from Florida around 9 p.m., and returned to his college dorm on Sunday.
He explained that finding internships in the hospitality field is so difficult that he has had to turn to the Sunshine State.
“Right now, the internship market in general is incredibly competitive. I mean, there are people who apply with perfect test scores, perfect GPAs, everything, and they send out 200 applications. But I don't get a single job offer,” he said on Fox Business.
Although not in the hospitality field, Campanaro, who is double majoring at New York University, admitted that he is still not as qualified as upperclassmen, who have more skills to land closer internships. .
“Basically I'm lucky,” the young man said. “This is purely coincidental, because he could have applied to every internship in the country and not gotten one in New York.”
He added: “New students do not intern at hotels. In fact.”
Despite the difficult and expensive cost of transportation from school to the internship and back, Campanaro said he was glad he was able to pursue this unusual arrangement with one month left until his internship. Told.
“I learned so much about the Ritz-Carlton philosophy and customer centricity and all of that and anticipating the needs and desires of our guests,” he said at Varney & Company.
In an essay he wrote for Business Insider, he brushed off questions about how to manage workload and travel costs to land a successful paid internship. He pointed out that he needed to study during the trip.
“I don't think of all of this as work, but as the pursuit of my passion. Each job I undertake is driven by sincere interest and ambition, and I spend each day discovering, learning, and personally “It's a great growth opportunity,” he said.
