Unpaid Internships

<p>Question for you guys.</p>

<p>I am considering applying for an unpaid internship with a performing arts center. I am fed up with looking for part time jobs or paid internships around here so I am just going to suck it up for now and see if I can find good volunteer work while still searching for part time work in the meantime. I figured that a) I would be doing work for my field (Computer Science) that could potentially spice up my resume dramatically and b) hopefully I could meet some new people from around the area (there are a lot of internships available for this place so I figured there will be some students from my school there I could meet while working there) seeing as I have virtually zero social life here and looking for something to do other then being in my room every night and weekend.</p>

<p>Two questions:</p>

<li><p>Can these eventually turn in to paid internships (like say within 6 months for example)? I guess it depends on the place but I don’t want to ask them that, haha.</p></li>
<li><p>Say that later on I am looking for a paid job somewhere else in the same field. Does it look better, the same, or worse if I label it as a volunteer job for working in my field? Perhaps it will look even better because it’s volunteer work and an internship at the same time. But I always wondered about that.</p></li>
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<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>Yes a lot of them do turn into paid internships/regular positions. (It's happened to me -- I did an internship and they offered to give me a paid position next semester)</p>

<p>Hmm, OK. I will keep that in mind.</p>

<p>Anyone else? Thinking about applying tomorrow.</p>

<p>have you considered trying to find a similar job or atmoshpere with a different company, that does pay? ; )</p>