After I raved, last week, about how enjoyable hanging round the house in my jim-jams is, I seem to have damned myself to a lifetime of it, by virtue of being turned down for a job. 

But as it’s “Reasons to be Cheerful” week here at IdeasMag, I’m going to spare you the details, save to say it was a role I would have killed for and my disappointment has manifested itself in the form of near-denial. My emails have now been refreshed so many times in the hope that a positive response will somehow magically appear that, were it possible, the curly-arrow-shaped “Send and Receive” symbol would surely have curled itself into a tight little ball in order to stop the abuse.

(Side note: are the worst PFOs – that’s “Please F*** Off” emails, for those uninitiated in the ignoble art of failure – not those that come through a couple of months after you’ve forgotten even applying for a job?)

Instead, I’m going to tell you a couple of things about interning that have made/make smile.

In the media, work experience is essential, particularly for those of us who have –by a cruel twist of fate – not been born into a family that isn’t already involved in the industry, and so can’t get a job by virtue of a few well-placed phone calls. As well as getting to do brilliant, smile-inducing things – like interviewing Halle Berry, helping style a Women Wrestlers of the WWE Calendar and reporting from music festivals under the banner of “work experience” – I’ve worked with some fabulous, eccentric characters (some of whom I’ve tried to describe here) without whom my working days would have been considerably less colourful. Readers, I even married one of them.

As well as finally taking me off my parents’ hands, interning has often proved a great way to make friends. Even before I was voted “Nicest to Work With” in an office where interns outnumbered permanent staff by a ratio of three to one, I used my fellow interns as a way to gaining a social life in whichever city I’d just pitched up in. Those bonds have proved stronger than I ever imagined, particularly when it’s almost always these friends I turn to when yet another PFO pops into my inbox.

As well as improving your social life, propagation of useful professional relationships is also an important reason to intern, even if some of the people you work for may be (how to put this?) a little bit mean. The worst bosses I’ve had have arguably been the most beneficial (looking at you, Deputy Editor of a hopefully-still-failing men’s mag) because they’re the ones who taught me the importance of being kind and patient to people who are below me in the pecking order.

Also, if you get along with some of these meanies, they may offer you a job, which for obvious reasons, is the intern jackpot!

More Intern X:

Homework

Working abroad

Image: good secretary by anniebee on a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.

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