Interns and Suffering

Do you know the Salk Institute? It was founded by Jonas Salk, the creator of the polio vaccine. The Salk Institute has a paid internship called the Heithoff-Brody Summer Scholars, where high school students work as assistants in labs assigned to them based on their interests. I applied, and even got to the final rounds where I would be interviewed by my mentor. Life was going well, and my mentor said she was impressed by me. It seemed I was going to take my place in Salk Institute after all. But then, catastrophe struck. Some sort of money or funding got cut, because then, for the next two weeks, radio silence. The people in charge of the Heithoff-Brody Summer Scholars internship never got back to me, never told me whether or not I was accepted or rejected. I was stuck in limbo and did not know what my summer plans should be. Was I going to get money from this internship? Should I try to sign up for college courses? Would I ever see Salk and its laughing seagulls, huge ravens, and nice nature again? These questions plagued my mind and gave me anxiety for the longest time. But while not knowing if I got into the Heithoff-Brody Summer Scholars program sucked, it also gave me time to think, and for my mom to reveal a truth about internships and being the new person on the job. I took notes on it. Here they are now!

• Most interns and new job people don’t actually get to do the fun part of the job at first. 
• You will probably be either the janitor or errand runner.
• That is to say, interns/newbies spend their time either cleaning up after other employees or running errands for boss (get coffee, get pizza, pick up boss’s kids/wife/mistress from somewhere).
• Sometimes, when running errands, you will have to pay for the things your superiors ask you to get, often without compensation.
• At best, the tasks will be tedious. At worst, the tasks will be very unpleasant. 
• Once, when my mom did an internship at a lab, she had to clean up the lab rats’ poop for 6+ months.
• The higher ups will say “You’re like family” as they make you do all the dirty jobs.
• Worst part is, there is no telling how long this period will last. Interns/newbies will only get to actually do their job and stop running errands when the boss says so. Which could be years.
• Interns and newbies go through the meat grinder at first.
• Being an intern/newbie is suffering.
• Suffering.
• This is probably why most people quit their job, they can’t handle doing all of those dirty jobs.

At the end of the lesson, my mom asked me this important question. Now that I know I, not just as an intern on most programs, but also as a newbie to a job, will probably be the errand runner and lab animal/plant caretaker instead of actually doing things I signed up for and things I enjoy, would I still want to do the Heithoff-Brody Summer Scholars program, or any internship at all? I thought about this for a long moment. The things she described did not seem pleasant. They sounded horrible, like the stuff out of movies.

Yet in the end, my answer remained unchanged. Yes, even if I had to go through the things described described, I would still sign up for the Salk internship. Why? Simple. First off, because I will most likely have to go through all that trouble anyway when I get my first job, so I might as well get acclimated to it sooner. Remember, the notes I took don’t just apply to interns, they also apply to the newbies. So even if I don’t go do any internship, I still will probably end up being an errand runner, just for a different boss. That could be why so many people are unemployed. These bright young minds sign up for a job, thinking that they’ll be able to do things they love and will get paid for, only to be told on the first day: “Yeah, you’re not going to do that. Today, you’re on lab poop clean up duty! And pick up your superiors’ kids duty, and buying coffee duty, and buying pizza duty, and doing your boss’s paperwork duty, and a million other boring and/or nasty tasks!” It’s a pain tolerance test, a test of devotion, to see if the new employee loves the job enough to stay around. 

That last sentence ties into the second reason why I would still do the Heithoff-Brody Summer Scholars program. I’ve found an internship that I’m excited to do, that I’m really passionate about. Such lucky and hands-on opportunities don’t come very often, so I’ll take them when I can, and I’ll prove myself, through my persistence, that I love the job enough to stay around, despite the inconveniences.