Many students are happy about an internship in other cities, but this opportunity often comes with a problem: finding (affordable) accommodation. Because in addition to the already small student budgets, their internships are often not paid at all or only very little, and the housing market in many cities is very tight.
Sophia Celentano faced exactly this problem. The 21-year-old American lives temporarily with her parents in Charleston (US state of South Carolina) and is doing an internship in Parsippany (New Jersey) during the summer holidays. The two cities are separated by more than a thousand kilometers on the east coast of the country. But instead of moving for her internship, Celentano commutes back and forth by plane.
At first glance, this sounds like a rather expensive undertaking, but Celentano actually saves money in the process. Renting an apartment or a room at your internship location is more expensive than paying for the weekly flight. Your internship at a company in the healthcare sector has one major advantage: you only have to appear in person at the office one day a week.
According to US media, she would have to pay around 3,000 dollars (equivalent to 2,750 euros) for an apartment in Parsippany. This does not include other living expenses. The University of Virginia student has temporarily stayed with her parents, takes the flight once a week and is therefore significantly cheaper. She spends about $100 a week on round-trip flights on a low-cost airline, plus $100 for a cab ride to the airport and $25 for food and fare increases. This will save her around $2,000 during her ten-week internship, she calculates in a TikTok video.
Of course, this type of commute is a bit more time-consuming. Celentano has to get up at 3.30am on the days she flies to the office to get to the airport on time. Her parents live an hour from the airport. The flight takes two hours, and the subsequent journey to her location takes another half an hour. But that doesn’t mean stress for Celentano, the student is more than happy to be able to spend time with her family during the semester breaks, whom she rarely sees otherwise. And her bosses ultimately don’t care how she gets to work. “Ironically, the longer commute actually gives me a better work-life balance,” she claims in a TikTok video.
Sources: Sophia Celentano on TikTok / Sophia Celentano on LinkedIn / CNBC
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