Having a summer internship is hard, okay? It's not all gaining real life experience and staying focused on career goals. Sometimes, you have to pay your dues and just show up at a tiny art museum once a week and put little to no thought into writing those little plaques that go next to paintings. I know I did. Here's some valuable lessons I learned during that extremely formative summer, thanks to my parents pulling some strings and landing me a low-level internship.
1. Bookman Old Style is the preferred font of the museum I worked at.
I don't think I'll ever need to know this again, but it may be useful for some of you if your parents ever get you the same internship I had. Feel free to email me for more details (i.e. font size, spacing, indent policy, etc.).
2. It takes either 7 or 11 minutes to get to where the internship was from my house.
Like halfway through the summer they started construction on the road I usually took to get to my internship that my parents got me. It was a huge bummer, because I had to leave 4 minutes earlier.
3. The museum closes at 4 on Tuesdays.
I knew this because my internship that my parents got for me was every Tuesday from 4 until my laptop died. It wasn't a very popular museum, I guess, because no one was ever there at 4 when I came, which is a shame because
4. Admission is free on Tuesdays.
I know this because there was a little flyer on the desk I worked at that said "FREE ADMISSION TUESDAYS!" But, like I said, I never saw anyone taking advantage of this great deal. I'm pretty sure admission was $12 otherwise. I never actually went to the museum, but that's my best guess.
5. My dad's old laptop has the world's shittiest battery life.
I was pretty happy to learn this, actually. I had to unplug my dad's old laptop to take it with me to the internship my parents got for me, and on my first day I learned that it barely lasts an hour and ten minutes, give or take, before calling it a day. This meant I only spent about an hour and eleven minutes a week at my internship that my parents got for me before I had to feign surprise at my dad's old laptop dying and got to leave.
6. It only takes an hour and eleven minutes for the car that my parents gave me to get hot enough to bake cookies.
Okay, so I never actually baked cookies. You got me, okay?! But it was, like, really hot in there every time I got back in the car my parents gave me to come home from the internship my parents got me. Remember, this was a summer internship! Summer = hot. Like sometimes I couldn't even sit down on the black leather seat because it was so hot. I'm pretty sure if I had put cookie dough in there before going to the internship my parents got me, I would have come back to a nice batch of freshly baked treats.
7. You don't have to include the fact that your parents got the internship for you on your resume.
There's not really a spot for how you got an internship on any of the resume templates I've seen. Thank goodness! You don't have to report how many hours you spent at the internship your parents got you, either, which is really good because I just thought about it and I'm pretty sure I only spent like 14 hours working that summer. But that doesn't stop me from putting "Research Intern" on my resume for the next 8 years!
Thanks, Mom and Dad!
