Congratulations, you got the internship! You were able to somehow convince someone that you have some sort of skills that could contribute toward some sort of cause. And now here you are, so eager to go out into the world, out of the library study cubicle that you’ve been in for the past four to six years. All the time of receiving and absorbing and taking in, now you’re ready to release it, to put it into practice, and an internship is just the place to get your feet wet.
Except, then you realize: why would I ever want to get my feet wet? There is nothing WORSE than damp, soggy socks and shoes. Welcome to an internship.
Now, there is a myriad of internship styles, just like there are jobs. It’s not true that you are always treated like the signup sheet for lunch; some workplaces will acknowledge you as a human being and treat you with respect! And opposed to just being an extension of the copier and Keurig, you are able to practice some of those skills you spent $40,000 trying to acquire through a certificate (I am referring to your college tuition). However, no matter the internship, there are some inevitably inescapable tasks and encounters that every intern must face.
1. You are the runner. Yes, you may be in a position where you have dignified tasks and assignments, but you have to face the cold truth of natural selection in which you are at the bottom of the hierarchy and therefore must do the tasks that are about as similar as trying to swat at a fly. Often this takes the form of, “Hey, can you go here to pick this up?” or, “Can you staple these 5,000 papers?
2. You actually don’t know anything. And very little that you learned at your time at the university is directly applied to this job. Here’s part of it: it’s like how when you’re in high school and you buy wide-rule notebooks, but then when you get to college you buy college-ruled notebooks. Why is this necessary? Because college students want to be distinguished from high schoolers. And I’m pretty sure professionals do the same thing with their system of work. They deliberately choose a system that is different than what is used in the university, so that when you get to the workplace, your methods of practicing your skills become useless!
3. You become the master at saying, “Okay.” Because it just becomes easier to accept whatever your supervisor, or six of your other fellow upper-level colleagues tell you to do or what you need to be doing than trying to explain to them what you are already doing or argue that what they are telling you to do will conflict with what someone else has already told you to do. Pick your battles.
4. You are not Superman or Wonderwoman. Because you soon find out that you will be asked to do things that are impossible to do or are not existent, yet you are expected to complete them. Like when your supervisor asks if you could "find out if a membership card exists that has a magnetic strip on it in which that is given to the organization's members that they can use to receive discounts at all of the partnering businesses just by a swipe, and that can track everywhere they like to shop. And is at a reasonable price." And they are not pranking you, they are 100% serious, in fact too serious. Number three can be applied to how you respond to this one.
Inspired by my having to go back and forth from Downtown Chattanooga to the Chik-fil-A on Brainerd Road (if you are a true Chattanoogan, you sympathize for me here because you know not only is this route without a prayer for a quick route, but that there is a stoplight at every block, in which there are about 40 blocks) three times today. Besides making friends with the Chik-fil-A employees, there wasn’t too much enjoyment that came from this trip.
Nevertheless, the purpose of an internship is to help you gain experience, and I suppose that it has done for me. I now know that:
1. "The Office" is a reality TV show.
2. I have no desire to hurry out of school.
3. The most useful workplace skills are not something that need to be earned through a degree.
4. Sometimes taking full ownership of my position and lack of knowledge as an intern can work to my advantage. “Can you make an Excel spreadsheet of this for me?” “Oh sorry, I don’t know how to, I’m just the intern.”
5. Staff meetings are great weekend recap sessions.
6. Make sure to keep all receipts.
7. I am now a culinary master at cutting cheese cubes.
Internships are also often a great avenue for networking. This I have benefited from as well as I now the name of:
1. The receptionist at the printing company
2. The lady at the front desk of the post office
3. The manager at the Chik-fil-A
4. The cashier/waitress at Champy’s
5. The bartender at the Terminal
6. A representative at the Guatemalan Consulate
So I may have made this a little dramatic, yet everything is actually accurate, just not equally represented of the internship as a whole. There have been real benefits and good experiences. I am very thankful for my internship, I work with great and caring people for a great cause. And I have been fortunate to practice some of my actual skills and make some great connections. But they just aren’t as memorable as my three trips to Chick-fil-A.
