I am currently a Junior majoring in Computer Science at a top university (in the USA). As I'm really getting tired of taking classes, I was wondering if taking a semester or year off to do an internship(s) is a reasonable idea? It seems like it would give me more experience programming (making classes a bit easier), and give me a chance to recover from the burnout that comes from taking 18 credits a semester. A friend suggested that I just take a lighter course load, but I only have 2 more semesters of financial aid, so I need to take 18 credits in each of them in order to finish.

Taking time off from school is not a normal thing to do, at least at this school. Since more internships are advertised for the summer (that I've seen), I was wondering if there are internships available in times other than the summer? If I took off for a whole year, would it be more valuable to try to stay at the same company for the whole time or to try to get a series of internships at different ones? Valuable in both the sense of resume value and personal value. Would it be easier or harder to get multiple shorter internships?