Thursday, August 7, 2014
Blog #5 Looking Back/ Overall Insight
My experience at UofM prepared me for my internship more than I initially thought it would have. One big part of my job is reading scripts and then writing a critical analysis of them, so my liberal arts education was definitely helped me with that. I never thought I was a particularly fast reader, or analyzer, but when my boss told me I was finishing my script coverages at a much faster rate than my fellow interns, and still producing great work, I started to kind of get the whole "Michigan difference" thing. One thing that surprised me a lot about my internship was the fact that only two out of the eight pre-production film interns were film, or in my case Screen Arts and Cultures, majors. The majority were business or economics majors, which I did not really expect to see, but once understanding that a lot of what our office does is financial it made more sense. I was also pleasantly surprised at how the other regular employees treated us. When they would ask one of us to do something for them, whether it was pick up food, or even give them our opinion on a script, they were always very careful not to sound condescending. One of the higher ups even apologized to me for the one time he asked me to pick up his lunch downstairs in our building. It made me feel like a valued member of the creative development team, and not just the summer intern there to make copies and go on coffee runs.
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This is the first post that has talked about how Michigan has prepared you for the real world. And I think that's more true and should be talked about more. I think a lot of colleges and universities do a good job of preparing kids. But Michigan is one of the best.
ReplyDeleteIt is great to hear that even as an intern you feel as though you are being respected. I had a similar experience at my own internship. I felt that my team members respected me and valued my work. I found that in my own internship experience, I didn't mind doing the occasional "intern" task because I felt everyone in the office as doing their own version of those tasks for the good of the team. I think that, in many situations, a little bit of respect can go a long way. In fact, I think I was willing to do, and in some cases even volunteered to, do "intern" tasks because I felt I owed my team for everything that they had done for me. I really felt, many times, that I was getting more out of my experience at my internship than I was contributing. While I do not know if that is true, I felt like I was very lucky and I wanted to be able to give back in anyway that I could. With that being said, I am not sure that our experiences at companies that value and respect their interns is necessarily "typical." In fact, I have heard of a number of intern experiences where the interns are hazed in many ways. While I understand a little bit of teasing can make the workplace a bit more casual and fun. I do not think that this type of intern relationship is healthy for the workplace.
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