I, recently came across this blogger (whose name I forgot), whose all entries about his/her internship had headlines as “Hopeless Internship Day #”, something like that until it got over (or it may be going on till now). I laughed to myself. The headline seemed appealing and you indeed are tempted to read what he/she may be going through to give such a name to his/her posts until I came across such situations where I wanted to say that too.

We, interns, sometimes, are looked down upon by the bosses of our bosses, who don’t know our value. We are working for you for much less than we are worth of, often times, doing same jobs as many of the employees do and many a times, better work than them. I’m not degrading the employees nor talking against the bosses. I know it takes time to see the actual effects of the projects we undertake. Moreover, there is a lot of under the surface work, which goes unnoticed. Actually, they won’t even consider that as work but we did it. We put time in it. And it is more apparent in those conditions, where, the bosses are new and unaware of the process of taking interns and their work. Something like this happened to me a while ago, when the company head came for a visit and we were asked to attend a meeting with a future supplier, in which, he was also taking the part.

Obviously, when you suddenly are asked to attend a meeting, with no prior knowledge on the topic, you are bound to remain quiet, just in case you offend the higher-ups sitting there. So, we were just sitting quietly, listening to the conversation, paying attention to the details, so that we might get some of the things, at least, from this advanced stage meeting (this was actually third or fourth one). I must say one thing, these meetings teach you a lot – how the suppliers try to convince you that they are the best, how you talk to them, how you give them details by not so giving them “the” details and what not. For now, it also taught how one creates a pressure on other party and how the other party handles that. I have come to realize that our company is doing so much for us (they let us attend the meeting with suppliers and we are free to, rather encouraged to, ask questions of our own) and we are growing with each and every activity we do here.

That aside, in the end, we were asked to give our input. We were asked what we were working on. And it had been around 15 days from the time we started. We told what we were working on and we were bombarded with a lot of question which were totally out of our field.

My dear boss’s boss,

We are engineers, chemical engineers. I understand we do economic analysis too with the technical details. But that doesn’t mean we have to do market analysis also, that too on everything. That is not our area, you see. It’s not that I’m not ready to learn. I’m eager, you teach me and you’ll see how fast I can do the things. But please don’t expect us to know every field like that.

I do know my roles. But this is real life situation and we have just started. It takes time to understand each and everything of the plant. You want us to know everything well in advance, that’s okay. I know, you are paying for almost every utility for us besides the stipend and I assure you that I won’t disappoint you. But give us some time. We are also humans. I’m sure, in the end you’ll say, it was an excellent deal to bring these kids here. But for now, you must understand that it hurts when we are deemed to be not working or not under proper guidance. Because I feel like, I’m doing bad to my mentor, my boss more than myself.

I also understand very well that, being from a reputed university, we are expected to know everything. Yes, we may know more (sometimes and sometimes not) but that doesn’t mean everything. You need to see that, although it fires me up when you say, we are not doing anything (even when we tell you about the projects we have already completed or are undergoing), but deep inside, it does affect my confidence. At least once in a while, you can appreciate us too. Won’t that be a better boost? Won’t that make me work more, to hear more praise?

I’m really grateful to have this opportunity to work for this particular company, I swear. I love everything here. But please, could you please, just read this once and try, just try, no, just think over it and implement some of the things? I shall be really very very thankful to you.

Oh, and this is from me only, my boss is not involved in it, I assure you. Please don’t say anything to her. Thank you, once again.

Yours sincerely,
The Intern