Working an Ibiza season will teach you more than a boring office internship

Sun, sea, sex and sand: the appeals of Ibiza are obvious to everyone. However, while some people will tell you a summer spent locked away in an office in the concrete jungle of the city, working for unsympathetic bosses for no pay is a better way to use your summer to help your career, they couldn’t be more wrong.

The traditional summer internship pits you against hundreds of other students who are all attracted to the same corporate firms like flies, buying into the idea working hard enough can get you what you want. Being an intern isn’t meant to be fun, which is probably why a lot of people bitten by the Ibiza bug end up quitting their jobs, booking a one-way flight and not returning. After all there’s only so many times you can survive on a lunch of out-of-date egg mayonnaise sandwiches.

Working in Ibiza means being thrown in at the deep end: living with close to a dozen other people and embracing a new culture and reality. You have to learn to be tactful, amenable and more understanding, all traits which will be more useful in the long-term than knowing how to laminate paper. Now, maybe that’s harsh. Some interns might tell me they learned a lot more than how to use basic office equipment, but what they won’t have learned is how to let go and break free of the entrenched barriers in so many workplaces.

Beats the boring office 9-5

Working with different people everyday on a commission-only basis not only tests your patience and people skills, it also teaches you how to manage stress and keep focused. Some days you might not make any money at all, but that makes the days you make a killing all the sweeter. It’s a hand-to-mouth existence but it keeps you on your toes far more than an internship where everything you do is with one eye on your future and employers will recognise this. By the end of the summer you’ll have developed more new skills than the friends back home meeting in the pub after a day in the office. You might even learn a new language.

Ibiza takes you away from the stressful hoops you’re constantly being told to jump through in your “real” life back home. You realise you don’t need to worry so much about getting a big salary. The sound of the sea in the morning and not knowing what you’ll do and who you’ll meet each day are enough to banish the nagging issues in your life into oblivion.

Your photos won’t impress employers, but the things you’ll learn will

Of course, if the spiritual nature of Ibiza’s lifestyle isn’t enough to convince you this is a better way to spend your summer, maybe the non-stop partying and best-rated clubs in the world can sway you. Space has been rated the best club in the world for several consecutive years in a row and the foam parties at Amnesia demand global reckoning and admiration from all party-goers alike. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to party as low-flying planes dip overhead, you should most definitely cross DC10 off your list, one of the most original and old-school parties still out there in the world today. And despite all the non-stop partying Ibiza hasn’t yet fallen to the dirty depths of Malia and Magaluf: it’s an island full of open space, spiritual-like retreats and magnificent scenery.

Even Nostradamus realized the amazing qualities of the Spanish Isle; saying: “Ibiza will be Earth’s final refuge.” He believed the peculiar prevailing wind patterns over Ibiza would ensure it was the sole remaining life-supporting environment in the event of a global disaster. If you value your life, there’s really only one place to be spending your summers from now on.