2008 Woodie Awards
Summer in the city
Chris Boucher
Issue date: 9/11/02 Section: Commentary
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What do you want to do with your life?
It is a hard question to answer, and even harder when you are wedged between the metal wall of a subway car and an overweight businessman who outgrew his shirt three sizes ago. At 7:30 in the morning, when the air conditioning is busted. Again.
The future really is riding on Metro.
Washington runs on interns. Every summer, as thousands of college students pour out of the district after finals, thousands more take their places, looking for their futures and a cheap happy hour. Some work on Capitol Hill (slave labor) or for one of the private companies in the area (underpaid slave labor). By 7:30 in the morning, an ungodly hour by college standards, the Metro stops in Dupont and Foggy Bottom are full of groggy pre-professionals hoping they do not get on the wrong line and end up in northern Maryland.
My own commute ended in Bethesda. This summer I managed to snag an internship with Discovery Networks, the company that brings you such fine programming as The Crocodile Hunter and Trading Spaces. As far as faceless corporate entities go, it certainly qualifies as employee-friendly. No one seemed pissed off to be there, anyway. This may seem good to an average new employee, but I was an intern, and, as such, compelled to find out if my future lay in the Affiliate Sales and Marketing division of a cable network. After all, this was the time that all the useful skills learned in college could finally be applied — to spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets. Long spreadsheets, wide spreadsheets, spreadsheets with multiple data tables. Enough spreadsheets to send you into a full-blown case of spreadsheet shock (symptoms include hands frozen into the shape of a mouse and grid lines burned into the retinas). And binder collating. No matter the profession or field, these are the sorts of things that interns do. It is also precisely the reason why internships are not the be-all and end-all of future employment placement. Your co-workers certainly are not prepared to answer that question. Consider this typical exchange between intern and employee:
It is a hard question to answer, and even harder when you are wedged between the metal wall of a subway car and an overweight businessman who outgrew his shirt three sizes ago. At 7:30 in the morning, when the air conditioning is busted. Again.
The future really is riding on Metro.
Washington runs on interns. Every summer, as thousands of college students pour out of the district after finals, thousands more take their places, looking for their futures and a cheap happy hour. Some work on Capitol Hill (slave labor) or for one of the private companies in the area (underpaid slave labor). By 7:30 in the morning, an ungodly hour by college standards, the Metro stops in Dupont and Foggy Bottom are full of groggy pre-professionals hoping they do not get on the wrong line and end up in northern Maryland.
My own commute ended in Bethesda. This summer I managed to snag an internship with Discovery Networks, the company that brings you such fine programming as The Crocodile Hunter and Trading Spaces. As far as faceless corporate entities go, it certainly qualifies as employee-friendly. No one seemed pissed off to be there, anyway. This may seem good to an average new employee, but I was an intern, and, as such, compelled to find out if my future lay in the Affiliate Sales and Marketing division of a cable network. After all, this was the time that all the useful skills learned in college could finally be applied — to spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets. Long spreadsheets, wide spreadsheets, spreadsheets with multiple data tables. Enough spreadsheets to send you into a full-blown case of spreadsheet shock (symptoms include hands frozen into the shape of a mouse and grid lines burned into the retinas). And binder collating. No matter the profession or field, these are the sorts of things that interns do. It is also precisely the reason why internships are not the be-all and end-all of future employment placement. Your co-workers certainly are not prepared to answer that question. Consider this typical exchange between intern and employee: