Summer Employment

We have an intern in our office this summer.  He isn't new; he was here last summer as well.  He may also have been an intern in our organization the summer before that--I think he's about to go into his senior year of college--but that was before I came to this organization.

This young man--we'll call him "Jeffrey"--is well-liked in our office.  I haven't really worked with him, since he's been assigned to a different team, but from all I've heard he does a great job, is very intelligent, and is a great team player.  I've even heard the term "boy wonder" thrown around.  He is a student at a prestigious Ivy League school, earning a degree in a field that is relevant to the type of work that we do at this organization.  He has done well enough in his past internships with our organization to be brought back each summer and put on the same team.

What Jeffrey is doing is smart--especially in the current economic environment.  He's "leaning forward in the foxhole," so to speak.  I would be shocked if our organization didn't pick him up immediately upon his graduation from college--he's a known entity and has already done some of the basic training courses that our other junior personnel have to do.  He wears a suit everyday, does the research, and throws himself into every project that he's given.  In short, he's setting himself up for successful employment after college, something that most college students would probably give a vital organ to secure.

This is all well and good, but...

There is a part of me that looks at this kid--and he IS a kid--and thinks to myself, Dude, what are you doing here?  He is obviously cut out for this kind of work--obviously cut out for research, and analysis, and presenting.  He knows the lingo, the dress code, how to handle himself in the office, etc, etc, etc.  His future will be in doing work exactly like he's doing right now, in an office (read: cubicle farm) just like the one he is working in right now, and he's twenty.  TWENTY.

Maybe it's me just thinking back to my summer vacations from college--but I just want to shake him and say, Jeffrey--you have your WHOLE LIFE to sit in a cubicle and work at a computer!  Get out, go do something completely different!  Go empty garbage cans at a national park, or work at one of the Smithsonian museums, or something that is DIFFERENT than what you are going to be doing for the rest of your life!

Am I wrong for thinking that?  Jeffrey is obviously doing what he wants to do, and he's good at it.  But I just wish I could warn him.  Of course, if I did, most--if not all--of my coworkers, Jeffrey included, would look at me like a had a third eyeball growing out of my forehead.  Maybe it's just my own growing displeasure with working in front of two computers in a cubicle farm that makes me want to shout out my warning to Jeffrey.

Of course, I won't.  But I think about it every time I see him.