14 January 2013

To intern or not to intern.

To intern or not to intern? That is the question.
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of unpaid servitude
Or to take arms against a sea of boredom
And, by opposing...
Do cooler shit.
     --William Shakespeare
         The Student of Göttingen
         Act III Scene 107.

Hey all!

I have absolutely nothing interesting to tell you.  This past week has been a mixture of proofreading various theses for euros, working my normal job, prepping for a presentation, and debating whether or not to go through with the internship I have lined up for February.

Pros:
--It's an internship, and I don't have one of those on my resume yet.
--It'll mean a weekend trip to Denmark.

Cons:
--I'm not emotionally invested in it at all.
--I hate the concept of internships.  If I'm doing forty hours of an actual job for you, I want to get paid like I'm doing an actual job for you.  I realize this sounds very "you have to walk before you run" or "you can't have your cake and eat it too" depending on your personal stance on the matter, but this is how I feel.  I want to eat my cake while running.
--It's in the middle of nowhere, or, as they say in German, it's on the "ass of the world."
--The vacation days I would have to take off from real job to complete it would force me to shorten my field research, because I'd have less time to take off.
--I've got three papers and an essay to write during that month, and working a full-time internship on top would kill me.  Plus I'd probably have to go to either Hamburg or Copenhagen for a decent library, and those are both really far away.
--I don't actually need it, since I more than make up for the lack of internship on my CV by racking up epic crap-tons of work and study abroad.
--I figure life is short and I don't want to spend a month working on an English-language website, which I am fairly certain I will hate, just to say I did it.  "Just to say I did it" is a category I reserve for fun things, like biking across Ireland or teaching a photography class in a Bolivian slum.

Hmm.  Well, I haven't made any decisions yet, but my, that is an awfully short "pro" list.

What do you guys think? Does it sound worth it?

I haven't done one of these in a while, but here's my new favorite song of the day!  Starts around 0:35.


Adios!

6 comments:

Alex, Speaking Denglish said...

Hmmm I think the length of your lists does sort of make the decision for you BUT then again it's ONLY a month and in the grand scheme that is nothing and you can have an internship on your resume, which are always so easy to make sound legit despite doing nothing.

Plus, my internships always helped contribute to improving my blog :)

Anonymous said...

1. don't eat your cake while running- you will choke.
2. "middle of nowhere= 97% of Anthropology work
3. explore other options: do two weeks instead of a month for example?
4. Internships = meet professional people, make contacts, etc.
5. search for something else closer to home (and I don't mean NJ)

claire said...

i was going to vote no but then i changed my mind and agreed with anonymous

bevchen said...

You do have a lot of cons, but one month isn't really that long, and internships always make you look really motivated - doing actually work for little or no money? You must be reeeeally into your field ;-)

Roomie said...

"...and internships always make you look really motivated - doing actually work for little or no money? You must be reeeeally into your field ;-)"

Really?! I agree with Tina. It is not fair to let people do the same work for less or no money than usual workers after three or more years of studies. That is not fair and shouldn't be supported, especially not from our generation! (In Germany, it is called "Generation Praktikum" - "Generation Internship" because young people work under horrible working conditions, only for short periods and for awful salary...)

For me, the strongest argument is that Tina's loses time for her field study because she can't get so many vacation days at her work. Yes, an internship is always fine but I think the field study is more important and Tina should stay in Mexico as long as prossible.

bevchen said...

@Roomie - I meant from a German employer's point of view. In the UK they'd never get away with it - there's such a thing as minimum wage there!