Internships and you! An inquiry into self/others

I have never been an intern! I feel like internships are something that happen on tv mostly!

I have never been an intern either and I work in a big intern profession! Although I have been an editorial assistant, which is shitty in the same way.

yeah, i've always worked in journalism/communications but never did an internship - i was in a work-study program in undergrad (4-5 semesters spent working full-time), all the jobs paid decently, went right into a job after that. it was the late 90s, in Canada.

My first job after college may as well have been an internship since the pay was really laughable, but I've never had a real internship.

I never interned anywhere. And while I feel like my directionless high school/college years transitioning into working life might've gone a lot smoother, or something, if I had done some internships, I also got a kind of guilty pleasure out of seeing how at times I felt like I was 'cutting in line' getting to do some journalism while still in or fresh out of college at places where people my age or a little younger were not being taken as seriously as writing prospects because they entered the building as interns. I'm definitely going to encourage my son to go into any kind of internship or apprenticeship that he might be interested in, though, I think it's better to dip your toe into the professional world as early as possible.

internships are definitely a thing in my "field" and most people i know have done one, but i think they've all been pretty different from like stereotypical coffee-fetching publishing internships on tv? i worked as a gallery assistant at a non-profit art gallery, helping to install shows and stuff. my last roommate did hers at a print shop as a tech/teaching assistant.

i am an undergrad right now & seemingly all my friends are either ra's or interns

I've been an intern twice, in two different careers. Was routinely abused in both under the auspices that I was being given "experience"

i think one of my summer jobs was technically a paid internship. it was pretty cool, i worked for voice of america's asian news center in hong kong so i got to record audio feeds of news reports from correspondents and then clean up the audio, or like go outside and record street noise on minidisc for background. and thanks to the favorable exchange rate at the time i was making pretty good money.

I did a paid internship years ago at the Village Voice which was actually not totally terrible and gave me a chance to write a few things for them. I probably could have made more out of it although in retrospect I'm glad I didn't go that route. I still think I learned more writing for pay at a crappy newspaper in an actual job than as an intern for the Voice.

I also interned once in Law School for a non-profit and it was a waste of time. Overall I am anti-internship. I think they're exploitive, and I also think they foster a relationship where the employer will not take you seriously because you're free labor and they don't really have anything on you. Paid work is inevitably going to give you better experience in addition to money.

Sorry, UNpaid internship at the Voice, iirc.

I would encourage my own kids to maybe try a couple of internships during college and MAYBE immediately after graduating. But watching people get stuck in a succession of endless internships is sad. At some point I think a person would learn more from working in any old crappy office job than continuing to do bottom-rung internships at prestigious media companies.

I had a paid internship with the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in the summer and fall of 2000. Edifying in a couple of ways: it taught me how to submit news copy on deadline; and reassured me that journalism was very far from being a passion of mine. I parlayed the experience into my current job.

I had a paid internship in the financial industry in the mid 90s & it was good in that I learned I didn't want to work in that industry. If it hadn't been paid I wouldn't have even considered it, though.

I was a stipended intern at a worker rights' center and then an extern (which as far as I can figure, is being an intern for college credit) at the EEOC during law school. They were both very valuable experiences and I'm glad I did them!

In the US, this is a good resource to make sure you're not being exploited as an unpaid intern: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

Well, that's not the litmus test for exploitation, but it will at least tell you if the org you're interning for is totally breaking the law.

i had two internships as an undergrad and three internships in grad school (non-concurrent; these three were mandatory)

one of those latter three was paid

Student teaching seems kinda diff than an internship. More like an apprenticeship. I got so many college credits for it though, and in reality it is an internship. That's the only one I've done. When I was a biol major someone tried to convince me to do one where I dressed up as an endangered crane and fed baby endangered cranes, but it didn't pay, so I didn't do it.

I did two summer internships during college at two different newspapers. I found both experiences really rewarding and the internships directly led to later freelancing opportunities at the institutions. I thought it was immensely worthwhile.

I should mention that I did actual career-related work at both internships. The second one in particular (at the coughVVcough) was the equivalent of a grad course in doing investigate work. Both gave me bylines while I was still working at the newspapers. I never got coffee for anyone. I did get experience doing research, writing, copyediting, doing layout, doing interviews, etc.

I have never been an intern and never want to be.

I volunteered when unable to work, but was apparently not legally allowed to take any 'internship', even unpaid.

i had a summer internship after my first year of college working at an investment bank. it was paid and i got hired full time that fall because the dept i interned in was really short staffed and they liked me a lot

ime in finance companies are willing to pay for actual admin assistants so internships tend to be fairly substantive and were taken p seriously.

I had a bunch of internships

I am anti internship, they are super exploitative

friend works at a gallery where the owner cycles in new female college interns in every few months so I guess you can do shit that w/ interns or something

it's not like I have any moral high ground w/ this shit tho, I've worked many jobs where I've gotten paid for doing nothing so I am no better than anyone else when it comes to that kind of shit

Junior year of college - Intern at a small music industry PR firm in NYC. Mostly cut articles out of newspapers and ran errands for my four bosses who were overgrown kids/addicts. Got to go to some cool parties though.

Age 29 - Interned at family planning clinic under supervision of NP there in order to gain experience before applying to grad school. Helped with all aspects of clinic - possibly my most favorite "job" to date.

Final semester of grad school (required) - Public policy intern an org that advocates for both teen preg prevention and the needs of pregnant and parenting teens. Was pretty great but made me realize I don't really like policy work.

Definitely abused in the first instance. The other two were very worthwhile.

when i was in high school i had an internship in metallurgical engineering at a steel mill. i don't think this was exactly a 'real' internship, so i didn't vote.

i guess it was vaguely exploitative? i don't think it was meant to be, but i knew more about supercalc (lol) than my mentors did, so i was somewhat useful. and i didn't mind, because i was a high schooler living at home.

needless to say, my work on the tensile strength of various steel recipes has had no practical use in my adult life.

I think at some point in life taking an internship is also undervaluing yourself. You've had work experiences, you have life experience, you be confident that you're capable of bringing something to a job that is worth paying you money for.

True but they can definitely come in handy if you want to make a career change and gain experience in a field you've not previously worked in as was the case with me and the internship I took on at 28. I was also working full time but worked out an arrangement where I could do both.

i think it v. much depends on the field

2
1st, unpaid at the NT Daily, college paper at university of north texas. I was at that uni for one year and did this internship for one semester, copy assistant. p sure I got this position bc I "wrote" for stylus magazine for two seconds, bc I was not a journalism major but had some writing samples and had edited my HS paper.

2nd, paid, summer internship at the US census bureau while I was in college. had maybe 15 hours worth of actual work per 40 hours a week which was fine bc i had crazy bad social anxiety bouts during this. unrelated, I nearly met TOMBOT on this trip which wd have bumped my number of ilxors met irl to 1.

could never have afforded to be an intern, were it even a thing over here

Most internships I hear about would have been 1st jobs a few years ago. For those who can afford it (parents) it's just working for free so that you can put something on your CV. Quite a lot seem to 'extend' or string people along for months and months. There seems to be more of a trend of actually paying minimum wage at the moment..

I am anti internship, they are super exploitative

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, May 8, 2012 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, in short. paid internships are fine obv, at a company i worked for (not in the media) we had a steady procession of (paid) interns of varying degrees of eccentricity and entitlement - it was almost a disappointment when an intern turned out to be normal and hard-working and talented (at least one of those immediately got offered a permanent job with us though).

i had a fortnight's internship at the times at the end of my second year of university. no wages but travel expenses etc paid. a piece of research/writing was the most important bit of the application, it wasn't a "daddy knows someone who knows someone at the paper" deal. wasn't living in london then, stayed at super-cheap b&b (it would've been no more expensive than a student-cheap holiday). anyway when i graduated the following year i managed to ride that into nearly a year of doing various shifts at the times (which i then did v little with at the time but never mind) so i'd say it was pretty crucial.

I think there is probably a divide between what is termed an internship in the US and what I'm familiar with in the UK. In the UK there is an established concept of 'work experience' which was carried out by 16+ and focuses on work ethics, timekeeping etc. In some sectors Internships are basically 'work experience' for university graduates who can be, and are often are, used more productively for the business.

i'm not sure how little it's regulated but UK internships vary so hugely, from basic school-age work experience deals to ethical/paid internships that can actually be a stepping stone to proper work to the unpaid ever-extending ones prevalent in eg the media, fashion etc that only kids w/money can afford to do.

Post-university internships are definitely increasing in the UK. It's one of the biggest challenges to social mobility at the moment. The losers aren't the ones who are working for free, they're the ones whose parents can't afford to support their working for free and therefore have the door to a whole host of desirable industries shut in their faces. There needs to be proper enforcement of the minimum wage - it's routinely flouted, even by huge companies like the one i work for.

Totally agree with you there.

Internships aren't always full time positions though. None of the three I've had were and I also worked full time and went to school during two of them. Many interns only do the internship a couple days a week and do something else the rest of the time.

That's true but the cost of living in the UK cities most of these internships are based in is generally so high it's not really viable for people to only get paid three days a week unless they're living with / supported by their parents.

In the UK there is an established concept of 'work experience' which was carried out by 16+ and focuses on work ethics, timekeeping etc.

I've never heard of this, but it sounds like something we could use in the US.

I had an unpaid internship for my final semester in college, doing prospect research for a non-profit org. I was very, very happy with it as it helped me find an application for my English major that I hadn't previously considered. The people who supervised me were really helpful in giving me assignments that I could put on a resume.

Internships that do not provide ~ real ~ experience are shit. Putting an intern in "the environment" and reducing them to photocopy duties and menial crap and symbolic drudgery while telling them they're, say, paying their respects is essentially indentured servitude. Moreso b/c internships are de rigueur in many fields now, and offer now advantage/guarantee of employment.

Educational internships are a different beast, as Abbott said upstairs, but I don't think that it's fair to make teachers teach for free for a year, no matter what.

I can't classify it as an internship but I did do two weeks work experience in the early 90s. It involved working with Sacha Baron Cohen, so that was classic (in one way!)

Voted yes and not-so-good, in that it was boring and unpaid. But I can pretty much credit it for getting me in the door to a paid position in my field, so ultimately for me it was worthwhile.

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