What, An Intern You Say?

Intern. What a glorious word. Not necessarily when you are one, although I was fortunate to have had good internship experiences, but I've heard the horror stories. And, at my first internship, we actually watched Office Space our final week in memoriam of our glorious summer work... so it's not like it was that good. Living in DC on the other hand...

My second internship was generally great. I worked as an academic conference planner and actually got to attend the conferences. Those were good times filled with early mornings, late night drinking and conversing, good food, and general merriment despite the fatigue that came with being the person responsible for the 6-7am set-ups every morning. And it's not like as a recent college graduate that you're going to turn down free, quality booze. I mean, come on, what's a little exhaustion in exchange for having access to food and drink you couldn't even dream about as a poor starving college student?

However, upon finishing my second internship I quickly approached a general feeling of disdain for the intern profession. I wanted to actually DO something, not just fill in temporary gaps in an organization.

Then I got my real job. Not so different than being an intern until you actually learn something useful. And I am not a conference or event planner, so those skills weren't all that helpful. And, even if you are doing actual work (which I do much of the time), you're still the bottom of the Totem pole. This is just the way it works being a 25-year-old business professional, but it certainly has its frustrating moments. Then, yesterday, my boss uttered the magical words: "So, do you know of anyone willing to do temporary work for us... you know, like a summer intern?"

That's right, intern! A person lower than me... whose job in many ways is to help me and will often report to me for various projects. I have to admit, upon hearing the news, I experienced one of the most professionally satisfying moments of my career. Oh the sweet, sweet feeling of being in charge of something again. How my tyrannical soul missed it so. After all, if there is one thing I am good at it is making others be successful whether they like it or not.

Now, the actual hiring of the intern is still very much up in the air and may not happen. I perfectly understand this despite my zeal. Nevertheless, just being able to dream of a day when I will once again be in charge of others is enough to keep me going during countless moments of frustration, inexperience, and general failure (not in the school sense of failure, but in the sense of not knowing what the client wants, what the boss wants, what society wants, who will answer your marketing pitches, etc. through no fault of your own because no one explains things until they have something in front of them by which to compare their expectations.)

It also means my time is more valuable than that of an intern's. So, I probably shouldn't be spending it finishing this blog entry. But, I must say, it's nice for my time to matter to someone other than me.