A Day in the Life: Summer Internship

All the work experience I have ever had before this summer is contained in the two "jobs" that I have had - working at a summer day camp and having a work study job at school. The work study is great - I get paid $7.50 an hour to sit at a desk in the Residential Life office, make copies, listen to juicy gossip about who got written up the past weekend, and do my homework. Plus, it takes $1500 off my tuition every year. Rock.

The day camp I worked at for the past 6 years gave me many, many headaches and just as many memorable moments. It's sort of a story for another day, because it is just that complex and crazy.

This summer, I decided I needed a change of pace. I went into the future and saw how my resume would look - 8 years of working at a kid's day camp in my town and 4 years of work study doing nothing? That would get me far. Plus, my dad had been telling me for years now that if I wanted an internship with a department at his work, he would work his magic and get me one. He never really got around to doing it, so this year I told him he either had to buy me a car, or get me this internship. That worked like a charm.

I started my internship 5 days after I came home from school. I was still totally jaded from the end of exams and being home, and I figured if I started early, I could escape early too. Plus, I could effectively work 12+ weeks, which equals more money.

This is the start of my 10th week working here. I'm glad it is going by so quickly, because I do love school and I want to get back and see my friends and party without having to come home to find my mother waiting for me all, "It's 2 AM. WHERE WERE YOU?" The thing about my job is that it is so incredibly BORING. And I don't have anything to do that will make it go by quicker.

Sure, I have my computer. The internet wastes a lot of time. I play a little Sudoku, peruse my favorite blogs, read ONTD like a maniac, and then pretend to have an Excel spreadsheet or Word document open when someone walks by (I'm pretty sure they know what I'm doing, though. But they won't say anything because I make their copies for them and file their 87 stacks of paper and in the process get about 34 papercuts, some of them from MANILA FOLDERS. You haven't had a papercut until you have had one from a manila file folder.)

They give me work to do, sure, but it's rarely work that takes me very long to do and they seem surprised when I finish it that day. "Oh my gosh, you put those papers in the binder in under an hour! Wow, thanks! You're amazing!" I'm starting to wonder if that's really the trick about college - forcibly rape your students for 4 years, during which they have no money and only 24 hours in the day to write 3 10-page papers, put together a 20-minute presentation, study for an "after-midterm" exam, and oh wait, your final exams are also in a week. And you have 5 of them. So you bust your ass for 4 years and have to maintain a certain GPA to stay in the honors program because apparently you're a masochist, and also you have to take 37 required classes and then write a thesis and also take a comprehensive exam your senior year that if you fail either of them, you don't get to graduate. For a long time. Ahem. So it's pretty much all that, then... do a bunch of work that you could just hire an intern to do? I know the people in my office do work, it's just that it doesn't seem all that complicated to me. I'm sure it is, and that I don't know the half of it, because I just do the dirty work, but still.

Anyway. It's almost noon and I've been here since about 8:15 (I come in extra early because my dad drives me since he works in the building next door, and he has to come early because he's the Most Important One in his office, but it's all good because I get to leave at 4:30 instead of 5.) This has been my day so far, and I will speculate on how the afternoon will fare:

8:15-11:00 Arrive in office. Spend the subsequent 3 hours on the internet, looking vaguely at stuff that I could be doing, and decide not to do it. Besides, I need information from this guy who is supposed to email me the stuff I need to make this brochure, and he hasn't emailed me, so what I am supposed to do. Plus, my boss isn't in this whole week.

11:05 Bring some appraisal documents to this guy upstairs. He looks at it, says "What is this? Why do I need this?" Sigh, I DO NOT KNOW. I am the messenger, people. They don't tell me what it is for or what it does. I just bring it to you. So then I had to explain that I had no idea and that my boss told me to bring it here and she is on vacation this week so if you don't understand, TOO BAD.

11:05-now More internet. Read old Gilmore Girls recaps on TWOP. Blog.

12:30-1:30 Lunchtime! Pasta salad today. I already have plans to go eat it outside at this cute little plaza place with fountains and trees and little tables. And continue my re-read of Half-Blood Prince.

1:30-4:30 More internet. Maybe call this woman who was supposed to call me about 2 weeks ago. Maybe go over to another office to see if they have some information I need. Maybe put together that brochure... oh wait I can't do that because I still don't have the information. Then go home.

That is literally what I do, with several variations on the work. For example, they made me do this grant proposal writing stuff for several grants they want. I turned everything in 2 weeks ago and haven't heard about it since. I think most of this stuff must not be very important, because I don't think they really care what I do with it. The grant proposals I wrote basically just re-worded a proposal for the same project they gave me as a guideline. I changed some things, but still. Same. Exact. Thing.

I don't think I expected too much from this internship, other than "Oh, well I guess this will look good on my resume." Seeing as though I have no idea what I want to do when I graduate (something that approximately 5 people a day bug me about), I don't know why I bothered? The pay is a lot better than the summer camp, and I work longer hours, but it just isn't contributing anything to my life right now and I'm assuming in the future. I want to write. I want to have adventures. I want to travel. I want to help people. I know I have to pay my dues now, but if this is what the working world is like? DO NOT WANT. I usually pride myself on being able to see human emotions and observe what a person is really thinking when they start a passive-agressive diatribe, but I don't need to do much imagining to get the people in this office. They do not like their jobs. I can't imagine ever living like this - wake up, go to the office, work all day sitting in a cubicle, go home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. I guess that it's just the work that bores me - it's project management that they do for current revitalization projects they do in the city, so it's the boring parts - the funds for the projects, who will manage them, etc. If I worked in an office all day but maybe got to write articles or criticize/edit books or maybe just write, I would be fine with that. As long as I had a life outside of the office.

Anyway. I have 3 weeks left of work, 2 weeks off (filled with fun and many trips to the store to buy stuff for school) and then I go back to school. So at least I don't have too much longer.

P.S. I don't mean to knock everyone who works in an office - I just don't see the particular appeal of sitting in a cubicle all day doing stuff like updating records of information on a particular loan thing. If it's your thing, cool. I also just don't understand Business/Accounting/Math majors, Republicans, serial killers, why all public bathroom soap has to smell like dirt, actually believing in creationism, and eating raw onions. Again, just me.