This year, a number of externships added extended deadlines after a low number of students applied. While this enabled more students to get involved in the externship program, they were then faced with the difficulties of arranging transportation and housing on a much shorter timeline. Several students who accepted late positions at a candy making factory in rural Alaska were struggling to find affordable housing, when they suddenly got a promising email (with an ominous ‘external’ marker indicating the sender was not from their organization). An anonymous student provided the original text of the email to us: 

Dear students,

It brings me such great pleasure to learn that several students from Carleton College are working in the candy shop this December! While I am not an alumni of your institution, several acquaintances of mine informed me about the program. I am an elderly woman living alone, and it would bring me great pleasure to have the company of two or three young folks for a few weeks. I have a very entertaining guest house, made to resemble gingerbread, which is only a short walk through dense wood from the factory. I will also happily provide breakfast and dinner, and all the sweet treats you could desire. It would also be ideal if the students applying had a good, sibling-like rapport, since you’ll likely want to explore the forest together. 

Initially, several suspicious students contacted security about the potential of this being a phishing email; however, they denied this. Additionally, when other students checked the housing spreadsheet, a row featuring “wickedwitch @ candyhouse.com” had somehow appeared. A couple of particularly desperate students replied to the email, seeing as they didn’t mind a walk with a good trail, and the hotels in town were extremely expensive. However, once they responded, the house owner made some strange inquiries: She mentioned that some of the houses’ windows had bars, to keep safe from bears and even more importantly, that bread and breadcrumbs were absolutely forbidden within a 3 mile radius of the home (which she assured students was because it attracts vermin and for no other reason). 

This still didn’t seem like such a bad deal, given the low cost of the housing, so students Hans L. ‘26 and Greta L. ‘28, who happen to be siblings, inquired after the utilities of the whimsical house. The owner replied almost immediately, enthusiastically telling the students about her ludicrously capacious oven, promising that the freshman 15 would seem like child’s play once they had had her cooking. However, the woman also mentioned that should Greta want to occupy herself, since she had a lower-hour externship, she would be welcome to help out with cleaning around the house. She also included pictures of the house, which looked almost to be made of real candy, with a giant candy cane mailbox and a caramel chimney. Hans was reminded of his favorite show, The Great British Bake-Off, and thought that such a home would make a brilliant winter Instagram story, and all his friends with virtual externships would be sick with jealousy. After these communications, Hans and Greta were more or less ready to commit to the housing; however, Greta shared that once they expressed this to the woman, everything changed.

“She sent us a proper contract, which seemed weird, given that the accommodation was free. But the weirdest parts were the demands in it; they actually slightly differed for Hans and me. But for him, she was asking him to initially consent to being weighed in front of her every day, claiming that he needed to be a certain weight to operate certain machinery in the factory and stuff. But she isn’t affiliated with them, so how would she know? What’s the connection between the two? And she wanted me to sign up to do eight hours of domestic labor a day, but the clauses about providing food were also different. It worried me. And when we looked for the house on Airbnb, it was totally different; the mailbox was knocked over and there were several bones pretty clearly in pictures of the rooms. We asked her, and she said it was just the vermin and not a current picture, and could we just sign already, but we ultimately decided not to. We’re just going to have to request funding for a hotel, I guess.”