This week, our anonymous intern columnist, Intern X, outlines a few resolutions for the year ahead; mainly, stop being an intern and start earning. And she's also got a milestone birthday and a wedding to plan...
If 2011 was the year I started “failing better” via the medium of an internship that has recently begun whispering about the possibility of paid work (yay!), then 2012 is the year I’m due to become a grown up.
I’m not merely paraphrasing dodgy horoscopes when I say that over the next 12 months significant life changes are afoot. For one thing, I am about to turn really f**king old; the invitations to my birthday party say so. For others, I have a wedding to plan, a new rescue dog to coddle, and paid employment to find. So busy does the next year promise to be that I’ve had to make New Year’s Resolutions of the get-your-life-in-order variety...
Settle upon a way to increase income
My soon to be Mr, it has emerged, does not fancy spending the rest of his life keeping me in shoes. Due to this, and the other pressures of being grown up I’m soon to be forced into making a decision regarding my (ahem) career. Unless the whispers about the internship turn quite quickly into a sit down chat and, crucially, a cheque with my name on it, I’m going have to find a real job.
Land a job as either an Assistant Producer or Researcher
These are the roles the TV honchos have been whispering about. I locked myself in the stationary cupboard and did a paper clip scattering tap dance after the possibilities were mentioned to me over coffee. Landing such a position is on this list because, frankly, I have no idea what I might retrain as should I have to. No one would let me loose in a classroom full of kids (teaching), on the mentally unwell (counselling), or on legal documents (law). Becoming a librarian is pretty much my only option, for which I’d have to master the ancient art of being very, very quiet. Finding a paid role in the media would be less of a challenge.
Give up my other job
Largely this is because, as well as not paying me, the waitressing job I took to fund my most recent internship came complete with a manager who thinks nothing of copping a quick feel. One of these things would be bad enough; the combination of the two quite clearly takes the piss. Also, I’m going to need all my time to help research and produce documentaries/practice self-imposed mutism/wallow in the kind of arse-widening depression that will surely come of my not achieving either of those things.
Plan my wedding
Nothing to do with interning but it does need doing. In the not inconsiderable amount of time we’ve been engaged, the Mr and I have done precisely nothing, which includes failing to decide which country we’ll marry in. Seriously, I have a friend who’s gotten engaged, married, and had the wedding written up on a popular women’s blog in the time we’ve spent messing.
Complain less
Out loud, I mean. I’m still allowed to write about it.
More Intern X:
The Christmas party
The world’s oldest intern
Image: good secretary by anniebee, available under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.