A Classy Internship

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Hello people!! I write this coz its fun and it doesn’t bug me if people don’t read it. But it’s not done if you read and do not leave a comment. We can be friends and who knows you might someday help me get a job, the chances of it being the other way round are bleak though but think of it like this... you'll have done a good deed!! So do leave a comment, just anything, be it about your urge to kick my ass.

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The previous summer was a great learning experience for most of my friends who were doing internships at a number of prestigious organizations. Here is an assortment of tips, tricks, tactics and antics to soon gonna be interns who have lied their way through (resumes) to awesome places and are scared of the little or no relevant knowledge they have...

Dear Smartass Intern,

So you impressed your to be guide and saw your way in by lying about how you have dreamt of doing this since you were six and what a great opportunity it'll be for you to further your skills at what gives you almost orgasmic pleasure. You took immense pleasure about how much fun you would be having during the summers while they would be cooling heels back home. But now its showtime and you are getting sleepless nights as to how you would survive the summers with the lack of knowledge that handicaps you. Worry not, here is a crash course on survival techniques for the unintelligent intern which can almost get you the employee of the week award at this organization of yours if followed sufficiently well!!

Day One

Grab a good breakfast, because a) breakfast is the most important meal of the day, b) your office location might rule out the possibility of lunch c) your firm might be a place where frivolous stuff like lunch is smirked upon. A definite sign of such a lunch-frowning company are vending machines dispensing soups and snacks installed near the exits.

As per norms, the first day should be highly non-productive in which they get one of the full time engineers to give you boring hour long demos of operations in the plant/company. Having finished with the tour you would be left with manuals and technical documentation 'to get the feel of things'. Amuse yourself by highlighting words in the 500 page manual so that they link up to form funny sentences. Future interns will love you for it.

At times hold your head and scratch your beard to display intense concentration. When not doing so, hunch over a heavy book to ensure no one notices your eyelids drooping and grab a 20 min quicky (...thats a nap). Once you've had enough of lazing around flip to the index and locate the single hardest and most inscrutable term listed and confidently walk up to the boss/guide and grill him over it. With little luck he won't know what it is and would try to bluff his way around while being deeply impressed about you already hitting the toughest stuff.

Maneuver with the steps above till you are through your 8 hour day and then leave. You might as well spend another day or two juggling around in similar fashion.

Moving on to the more permanent tricks of the trade

College renders you totally unfit for working 8 hours a day. Thus the key lies in maximizing the 'Apparent Working Time' to 'Actual Working Time' ratio. Reach office 2 minutes early. Run in, open a few excel sheets on your computer, get half a mug of coffee and slouch in your seat. When everyone trickles in, they'll think that you came in really early because slouching is an indication of having been in a seat for a while, and half a coffee mug takes at least 15 minutes to achieve. This is the half beverage technique which can be used in several ways to create time-illusions.

The next opportunity to boost the all important ratio is at lunch. Leave after just about everyone has gone for lunch and come back miserably late, and no one will figure a thing because they'll assume you left really late. Befriending industrious colleagues might blow your cover as these guys would start inviting you to join them for quick 20 minute lunches.

The last and trickiest stunt for the day is when you leave. Leaving after everyone leaves is not an option because staying back is exactly what you wanna avoid. Instead, install a spare jacket, a backpack and a half finished bottle of coke at your work station (note another instance of the half beverage technique). About twenty minutes before quitting time, walk slowly towards the restroom and at the opportune moment dash out the exit before anyone spots you. When everyone leaves, they'll see the backpack, jacket and drink and think you are still at work and have just gone out to the loo. Depending on how dumb your coworkers are, this can add up to 40 minutes to your Apparent Working time. Coming in two minutes early the next day works out perfectly so that you can get rid of the evidence before anyone gets to work.

Getting some work done (thats why you are here dude!!)

The last thing you need to know is the Zen Art of producing results without having worked. Making everyone believe that you are working long hours and stumping the guide over obscure questions doesn't mean you can produce results. Unless lady luck is your girlfriend you would be assigned a project and loads mind numbingly boring data would be dumped over you. Few things need to be kept in mind, (i) don't get carried away and attempt a solution (ii) make sure the work isn't done before the deadline, it'll be even better if you can push those to later dates citing stuff like discrepancy in data etc. etc. etc.

Find 'a good man at heart' with some speech impediment or a very heavy accent and ask him a harmless doubt as to how to proceed about the problem. Put on your concentration face while this gentleman answers you and then tell him (with a helpless face) how you are unable to follow what he says. After a few more attempts, act slightly exasperated and turn the screen towards him, once he settles down to explain using an example your battle is half won. Make sure you keep nodding and make encouraging sounds like "aha, perfect!" punctuated with a few very thoughtful but skeptical "hmmm...." If you rise in confidence you can also throw in some generic help statements like "we should do this in a more object oriented way". Exercising the same routine a few times over, would, in all likelihood see you through. Finally, thank him profusely (always remember its to the credit of the 'good men' that companies hires interns) and buy him a coffee and take a break for you have just completed a good lot of work.

One last thing is to always have a pack of gum or mints at hand. Keep offering it to everyone. You would be recognized as a nice guy around, which helps in ways more than one.

Enjoy your internship and try not to work too hard.

Sincerely
Piyush Maheshwari

The author did his internship in Bangkok at Thai Organic Chemicals Pvt. Ltd.