submissions wanted for a zine on internships

[Alma]

Hello,

im fairly new to this forum, so i hope this works! So here is my idea... I would like to make a zine about internships and personal experiences of interns. Earlier this year I worked as an intern at a gender and development NGO in the Netherlands. During this time I started to wonder about what this experience meant for me and my future 'career' (if there ever will be one..). In the end I became more and more disillusioned with my work and began to have doubts about me ever working again. Surely this is not what an internship is supposed to be like, especially seeing that my university made a 6 month long work experience a requirement for all students. After having talked to friends and other students I found that a lot of people shared my frustration. Could that be a coincidence? Can I conclude from this that the working world is really shit and not for me? How do other people deal with this situation?

What I would like to do with this zine is to collect stories of other people's experiences with their internships or perhaps their first job. It doesn't matter whether your experience was positive or negative as long as it had some sort of impact on you. So please if you have a story which you think is worth telling, I would be most interested! Thank you!

if you have any questions regarding my project or want to submit a story, feel free to contact me:
[e-mail]

[Kate Haas]

No experience as an intern to submit, but I wanted to say that this sounds like a really interesting topic for a zine and I'd love to trade with you when you get it done.

[ciaraxyerra]

i'm sorry, i just have to ask...you wrote, "can I conclude from this that the working world is really shit and not for me?"

really? REALLY? for most people, the working world is probably shit, but few people have the privilege of just opting out. & it's a small minority that gets to dip a toe in the waters of the working world via an internship before they ever have to sling fast food or fold sweaters in a mall somewhere. not saying it's not a good idea for a zine, but maybe it's worth dialing down the "i learned from my internship that works sucks, let me tell you all about it" angle. it's just a touch off-putting. especially in this job climate.

[Alma]

i see what you mean.. BUT my frustration is also the reason why I would like to make this zine, I am hoping that there are some people out there who enjoyed their internship/ first 'real' job and learned something from it. Although, I didn't necessarily love my work experience I still got something out of it.

So in order to clarify things: I don't want to diss the working world, instead I am interested to see what other people made of their experience.

[Lotte Rubbish]

Alma, this idea interests me. As my advisor told me before I began my psych internship, it's okay if you end up hating what you are doing. It is all part of the process of discovering what you DO want to do. I would be glad to submit to your zine. I already have tons of stuff written about my experience, since I was required to keep an experiential journal, so I will dig through that stuff and see what I can make of it!

[Catherine]

There was a report in the UK a couple of weeks ago about social mobility that singled out internship culture as one of the reasons social mobility has decreased so much over the last couple of decades.

It would be pretty interesting to look at the impact of internships structurally as well as the experience of them. I know that internships based in London pretty much stop anyone getting ahead in lots of areas unless they have nice parents to house and feed them for a year (or more). Apparently the system started in law firms to make sure 'the right kind of people' ended up working there. And it is spreading into so many areas.

I think this is more of a suggestion than an offer, but I'll keep thinking about it!

ciaraxyerra said:

i'm sorry, i just have to ask...you wrote, "can I conclude from this that the working world is really shit and not for me?"

really? REALLY? for most people, the working world is probably shit, but few people have the privilege of just opting out. & it's a small minority that gets to dip a toe in the waters of the working world via an internship before they ever have to sling fast food or fold sweaters in a mall somewhere. not saying it's not a good idea for a zine, but maybe it's worth dialing down the "i learned from my internship that works sucks, let me tell you all about it" angle. it's just a touch off-putting. especially in this job climate.

[Lotte Rubbish]

I wish I had nice parents to feed and house me while I work and study! Thankfully, my internship was paid. ;)

Catherine said:

There was a report in the UK a couple of weeks ago about social mobility that singled out internship culture as one of the reasons social mobility has decreased so much over the last couple of decades.

It would be pretty interesting to look at the impact of internships structurally as well as the experience of them. I know that internships based in London pretty much stop anyone getting ahead in lots of areas unless they have nice parents to house and feed them for a year (or more). Apparently the system started in law firms to make sure 'the right kind of people' ended up working there. And it is spreading into so many areas.

I think this is more of a suggestion than an offer, but I'll keep thinking about it!

[Alma]

thank you both for your feedback! This study about social mobility sounds interesting, I will try to find it on the net.
Lotte, I look forward to your submission, you will be the first one, woohoo!

[KellyRose-Pulse Zine]

i also think this would be a very interesting zine. i personally haven't seen any zines really pertaining to this subject and perhaps you could use the dialogue on internships to discuss how do people find out what job they want to do/ what career path they want to take. i think it's great because so many people don't know what an internship is like, what to expect ect. it would be good to have stories on positive aspects of the experiences as well as the negative. perhaps you could use people's stories of their first jobs as a way to tie into the dialogue of how people come to find out what they want to do...

being a pseudo academic adviser to all my friends navigating the job/college process i think this zine would be a much needed reference...as long as other people mentioned it isn't just bashing the work world and the world of internship which i don't think you intend it to. maybe highlighting the ups and downs of this process would be a good way to focus the zine.

[Betty]

I think another thing to look at is...are companies, businesses, and organizations being trained to understand what internships really are and what they are really meant to provide? I think a lot of companies just look at internships as free grunt labor, either because they are shrewd or because they simply don't understand the type of experience an intern should really be getting. What can be done to get them up to speed and how can we find a way to communicate to each other which experiences are worth doing and which are probably better to avoid.

I'm with ciaraxyerra...I think this should be constructive and kept in perspective.