Internships are hot these days. They're almost required for an entry-level job, they hardly pay well, are modern-day forms of slave labor, and now, just when the internship formula of coffee grabbing, photocopy making and covert facebooking was perfected, MTV is making internships look unnecessarily cool.
""I'm with Rolling Stone"" and ""The Hills"" have done little to prepare college students for what they should expect out of their summer internships. Their celebrity interviews, trips around the country and not having to figure out how to reload paper into the office copier have raised expectations. If this is what internships have become, I think I was cheated.
In the beginning, there was Twist magazine, a teen magazine that targeted 11 to 14-year-olds in suburban New Jersey. Internship duties? Transcribing celebrity interviews, a month-long research project on celebrities' favorite flavors of Jamba Juice, watching fall TV pilots for cute boys, daily reading of tabloids and writing the embarrassing moments section.
It wasn't enough if a girl went swimming and had her tampon fall out or if she slipped and fell at school. She had to go swimming, have her tampon fall out â_ causing the pool to be evacuated â_"" and fart, all while the boy she was totally crushing on was watching. And she had to slip, fall and have her backpack explode all over the floor, revealing her secret stash of pads and tampons—including the one that rolled across the floor to the feet of that boy who she was, like, totally for real crushing on.
There was also the sorting through the reader mail, answering stupid 12-year-old girls' questions about Jesse McCartney (he's taken, ladies), Hillary Duff (favorite subject in school: math), Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, and Benji and Joel Madden (why are they considered attractive and talented?).
Then came the press office of the French Embassy.
Duties? Answering irate e-mails about French foreign policy (""My grandfather didn't give his life on the Normandy Beach so that your pansy French ass could support the Palestinian terrorists""), irate e-mails about the French metro (""Americans didn't save your white-flag waving butt so that we could ride around in the filth"") and irate e-mails about French flag-folding policy (""I was at a banquet, and I noticed that a French flag was being used as a table cloth. That is not proper flag protocol"").
There were also obnoxious phone calls, letters from kids who wanted pen pals, letters from prisoners who wanted pen pals and general question answering:
""Um, hi, bonjour, I was wondering, what is the French protocol for starting a business? Because I want, as soon as I get out of prison, to start nudist tours of the French countryside.""
""Hello, where can I get the names of French ballerinas who would like to have my children? Preferably blondes.""
""Hi, my name is Ernest Hemingway.""
""Hi, my name is Prince Henry the seventh and there is a vast government conspiracy that is preventing me from assuming the French throne. Look up ‘mind control' on Google and call me back.""
Clearly, I'm ready for graduation. Anyone need a fresh pot of coffee made?
Need someone to underpay, underappreciate and scald with coffee when things go wrong?
