This year, I took in a student-trainee. An intern. Her email message expressing her interest to be an intern came at the perfect time–when I needed someone to help me with the Annual Report of our office.
When the news about it spread in the office, some officemates referred to the intern as an assistant of our group. I did not like it.
So, when we had a staff meeting, I formally announced about the internship. Along with the introduction of the intern was a reminder to all my officemates that she is not an assistant. She is a student-trainee with a customised learning and development plan.
I feel bad when people refer to interns as merely assistants, whom you can assign dirty jobs or miscellaneous tasks. For me, internship entails responsibility on both parties, the sending university and the accepting organisation.
A university sends its students as interns with high hopes that they could learn skills and knowledge, or gain experience. These learnings can be used by the intern in his/her work after graduation or may be shared plainly to other students.
The accepting organisation, therefore, has a duty to teach or impart knowledge and skills to a student-trainee. The learning and development plan does not include photocopying documents and will never have an item on preparing a good coffee for any staff or the boss.
I hope that the intern will learn valuable lessons related to working in a government office. And when she does, I hope she will use it to upgrade her performance in her future endeavours.
DEXTERIFICATION 