Are they interning or are they co-oping? All the interns I met or had to deal with do not get paid at all, but they do get college credit. Co-oping does get paid and some people might get college credit.
My daughter is doing a paid internship at her university this summer. Maybe it's because we're Canadian and the expectations/culture/rules/etc are different here, but all of the internships I've ever heard of are paid.
With regards to the original post, this is the paragraph I appreciated most:
A note about this post, which is being linked to from all over the internet: This situation is not about “young people today.” The letter-writer’s generation is far from the first to bridle at dress codes or misunderstand office culture or start out with little knowledge of how things work in offices. This is about being young and new to the work world, not about what generation they belong to. Most of us made plenty of mistakes when we first started work — I certainly did. So please go a little easier on this person.
Exactly! Any one of us could have made this mistake, or been wise enough to avoid it, no matter what generation we were born in.
At 20, I would have signed the petition out of an optimistic hope that maybe we'd get to wear sneakers all summer, and never thought of the possible consequences (because I wasn't the kind of girl who did). My
mother might have signed it if she thought she was being oppressed by the regulations for women's business wear. How do I know this? Because once, back in the 80's, my 40-something mum's boss told her he wanted her to purchase some of those shirts with the floppy bows that were the usual office wear of the time. My mum refused, arguing that her seventies-era skirts and blouses were FAR more professional than the big shoulders and floppy bow ties, and besides - shouldn't she be judged on the quality of her work and not whether she wore a silly, humiliating bow? Her boss decided she wasn't a "good fit" for the "culture" of his office and let her go.
But my twenty year old daughter? I passed her the article and asked her to read it. Then I asked, "Would you have signed that petition?"
"No, absolutely not!"
"How can you be sure?" I asked.
"Because I didn't sign the petition against our academic advisor last year."
"Why not?"
"Well... I don't know what they thought they would achieve by it. And I didn't think she was that bad, really. And I knew I'd be working with her this summer. So, all in all, it seemed like a very bad idea and I didn't want any part of it."
She also thought that as an intern, you're a guest in the workplace at your boss's sufferance (she was very careful to dress similarly to her supervisor). And she also thought the interns should have done more research, at the very least speaking to the person they were singling out as an example of people "getting away" with breaking the dress code. (She's a scientist, and always all about data.)
I've always been thoroughly impressed by my daughter's good sense. Goodness knows, she didn't inherit it from me!
Also, to everyone who likes to rag on "this generation"... who do you think raised them? We did. So, if you truly believe they're so clueless and self-centred and lacking in moral fibre... then take a good hard look at yourself. Because IF all that was true (and I don't believe for a moment it is), then our generation is the one to blame.
Truthfully, I believe there have been naive young people making foolish choices in EVERY generation. And there have been just as many wise, level-headed young people making smart decisions in every generation, too. Twitter and Instagram haven't destroyed this generation any more than pulp fiction, radio, television, jazz or rock music destroyed any generation previous.
The kids are all right.
