September 8: Little Miss Paid Internship

It was one of those days where the sound of the door opening makes your hair stand on end. With a constant stream of students all coming to buy books, I never even put the receipt book away, knowing that it would just need to be pulled out 10 second later.

When Little Miss Paid Internship came in, already something was different. Other students came in cautiously, closed the doors behind them, and nervously looked around before approaching the desk. She, on the other hand, sauntered in very confidently in her suede boots and with a bit of an air of entitlement, and addressed me from half way across the room. She wanted to know if we had statistics of student positions, namely their salaries. Knowing a colleague who worked on this, I deferred to his assistance.

Though the information was all on the website, he was happy to print out the hard copies, and handing them to her, she seemed disappointed. She wanted statistics on the internships, not jobs. Mr Colleague explained we don't really track those, but again, on the website you can see past internships and if they were paid.

"Yeah-- but they don't say how much."



That was enough for me to declare her officially my Favorite Person of the Day. I am a model example of someone who was not raised with much of anything in the way of resources or monetary security, and I have 25 years experience of supporting myself and needing money, etc. But I learned early on that unfortunately, the definition of an internship in this country means little to absolutely no payment. Good for her for holding out for the big bucks though. I'd love to follow up with her and see what she found.