Hillary Clinton

Everyone needs to pay their dues somewhere, and Hillary Rodham interned for Republican President Gerald Ford in 1968 when he was still in Congress.

Steve Jobs

The king of American technological advancement (depending on who you ask) also needed to start somewhere, and that was an internship with Hewlett-Packard. He got the gig by nonchalantly calling up William Hewlett himself and asking for parts to complete a school project. Needless to say, he got all he needed and met one of the co-creators of Apple while he was there.

Tom Ford

Before Tom Ford became a creator of incredibly expensive suits and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, he was just a lowly fashion intern. Mr. Ford spent some time interning in Paris at French brand Chloé before getting a full-time job at Gucci, where he became the icon he is today.

Seth Meyers

Some famous people were even bad at their internships! The late night host and former SNL member got an internship at Comedy Central, and during the end-of-semester review, they told him that he worked really hard during the first half, and then spent too much time watching TV during the second. It happens to the best of us.

Lauren Conrad

Whether Lauren “LC” Conrad from Laguna Beach deserved her cushy internship at Teen Vogue remains unclear to most of us, but we all enjoyed watching it on MTV during the show The Hills anyway.

Aubrey Plaza

I’ve recently called Aubrey Plaza one of the best actresses of our generation, and I’m not lying. She got her start interning for the NBC Page program, giving tours of 30 Rock, where she would spout made-up facts about the building to the people on the tour.

Conan O’Brien

Before he was a late night icon, he was a Congressional intern. He interned for Rep. Barney Frank before he figured out where he belonged was in comedy. Then he got his own interns…

Mindy Kaling

Which brings us to Mindy Kaling. Mindy started out as an intern at Conan O’Brien’s first show. She was also not a very good intern. She didn’t do any of the work she was there to do, she was so starstruck by Conan that she just wanted to follow him around the whole time.

Ellie Kemper

Kimmy Schmidt also interned at Conan in 2005. It’s a long-standing joke that becoming a Conan intern means you have a great chance of becoming famous after, since she, Mindy, John Krasinski, and others have found stardom after getting his coffee.

Chloë Sevigny

It has recently come to my attention that even Chloë Sevigny had an internship. She worked at Sassy Magazine in the 90’s, after being stopped on the street by the editor-in-chief and pretty much given the opportunity on the spot. Don’t expect that to happen to you.

Kanye West

In 2009, Kanye decided to take his love of fashion to the next level and scored an internship with Italian brand Fendi. From that grew his first, misbegotten Kanye West fashion brand, which only had two collections and was never produced. It’d be a few years later when he collaborated with Adidas on Yeezy that his dream would come true.