What am I Doing? Part 3

The Worst Internship Ever

I slept it off, forgot about it and moved on. I stayed with my girlfriend, unfortunately the life questions stayed with me too. Now, more than ever, I was lost and confused. I got stuck in an internship that came about at the last second (this only happened because the one I was promised the year before decided they couldn't pay me again).

I had positive hopes for the internship as one of my classmates was my supervisor. I went into it thinking great things could come from it, and that I could benefit the community a lot.

I was close to home, I was in a community I enjoyed, and the professors all thought the community would love me. Turns out I was wrong, they were wrong, and man...they were really wrong.

The first meeting I attended I asked a simple question about when I needed to report for work (this had never been discussed so I wanted to be certain). When I asked I got told "8am, like always" in such a crappy tone that I was rather furious. I blew it off though, I thought nothing serious of it and figured things would be better come Monday.

But they weren't, the very first day I overslept and had an allergic reaction that I hope to never have again. I was 5 minutes late by my clock, 15 by theirs. I apologized as I already felt bad for being late, I felt even worse that I could barely breathe. They didn't care much though as they lectured me about the importance of being on time.

This is my opinion, but if you work in an office where nothing happens for the first 2 hours, then the first 15 minutes of the day mean nothing. 

15 minutes later, and a deep lecture, they decided to take me on the city tour. During that tour I had to ask the one question I didn't want to ask, but I knew my parents wanted me to go on vacation with them to Vegas. It was was a really big deal as we hadn't had a family vacation in almost 7 years. Family means a lot to me, so I asked if me being gone for a week would be a bad thing and that I would make up the hours following the trip.

They said yes at the time, but later it came out that it looked bad on me. I'm glad their priorities were work work and work. Truth is, they often came in on their days off and on their vacation days. They'd come in and just complain that they were there the whole time, but in reality they only did it to guilt trip people.

After my vacation they ended up working me for a month straight with hours of 8am-Midnight. During the first week I had some sort of stomach virus which sent me home puking. Not sure what it was, but it was the worst feeling I've ever had. Working these hours feeling this way was the death of me. Come Friday night I died (unless I had to be there Saturday). I had no life and I found no enjoyment in the profession anymore.

The truth is, this whole time working 8am-Midnight, I probably only had about 4 hours actual work. The rest of the time I sat around supervising high school kids. It was me being a warm body and doing the work cheap. It was awful and no intern should ever be forced to do the work for a city who is too cheap to fund employees.