Interning has become the linch-pin of every college education. How important is it? I honestly can't tell you, but if my professors and career advisors are to be believed I better have more internships than class credits if I want to have enough "real world" job experience to be a hire-able college graduate.
Getting an internship (or at least finding ones you can apply to): not as hard as you'd think. Sure, it's a pain in the butt to make a résumé, write a separate cover letter for each organization, and then try to (hopefully) work out interviewing between a business's operating hours and your 15+ hour semester workload. At least once you get the hang of it you realize that you have like *zero* experience so your résumé is basically every job and volunteer position you've had in the past 6 years and that you just can write one cover letter and alter the names of the organizations and key information.
The hard part is your attitude about the internship itself. Most likely, you are unpaid. Strike 1. You have to manage to work out internship hours around a class schedule, usually while still managing to get in a respectable (15+) hours of college credit within that 4 month period. While attitudes about interns vary from organization to organization, you have to realize that you are the new person whose basic implied job title is helping with whatever you're asked. Add all this to you is, in fact, the *new* person (i.e.you are thrown into an environment where everyone inevitably already has their work friends and could be anywhere from a recent college graduate to a person near retirement age). So, yeah, sometimes coming into the internship with a good attitude - and more importantly keeping that good attitude - can be more of a struggle that one might think.
1. That time he finally went out with Kelly...on February 13th. Rookie Temp Mistake Ryan.
Keep this in mind interns: internship romances aren't Jim and Pam.
2. That time he thought he was moving up in sales but was super awkward at the meeting so Stanley made fun of him for the rest of the work day.
Ambition in an internship is a good thing, but make sure you know what you're getting yourself into or risk the consequences of your superior's mocking.
4. That time when (even if he was an "employee") people still didn't know his name.
And just think - when you're an intern you're the "new person" so NO ONE will no know your name.
5. That "Wait. What?" Face of all internships' first days.
I'm supposed to copy what for who in which order? Could you repeat that? But I swear I was listening the first time.
That being said, I think internships are great! The two I've had have been informative, fun, and really related to what I want to do with my life. So I'm benefitting from the internship-pushing undergraduate world. But for those of you who aren't (or at least are having a bad day) here are 5 times when Ryan Howard's temp troubles at Dunder Mifflin couldn't possibly be worse than yours.
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