My new favorite picture of my two favorite people!
This article about the outcome of a lawsuit brought against Fox Searchlight by two former interns is about a month old, but the implications here could be interesting. The judge ruled that the film company violated the law by not paying the interns, because their duties were on par with what other paid employees were doing. It’ll be interesting to see whether this ends up shifting how internships work in the film industry and beyond. I was paid back when I was a co-op in college, and I believe most of my friends who worked for various companies as co-ops and interns were also paid. That seems to be the norm in the engineering and tech world, at least. But in the years since, I’ve realized that there are a huge number of internships — especially in fields like film, journalism, and art/design — that are not paid. The party line seems to be that it’s ok to not earn any money because you’ll get college credit and gain experience…but let’s face it, it’s almost never fair to expect someone to work for nothing.
This blog post about the “dangers” of should-ing yourself is also a month old (can you tell I was just catching up on my RSS reader recently?) was pretty timely for me. I never seem to have enough time for everything these days…I mean, who does? But it’s not until I get mired in a laundry list of things I feel like I should do — not necessarily things that actually need to get done — that I get really stressed out. “I should do something productive instead of sitting here watching TV, like hem those pants, or balance the bank accounts, or clean up that pile of clothes in the bathroom…” But the truth is that sometimes I really just want to sit like a blob on the couch. And that’s ok. The world will not end if the laundry piles up.
And in spacey news this week…
Here’s a great article debunking 5 current misconceptions about NASA. Guess what — NASA’s still here! And we’re still trying our best to do cool things, despite Congress siphoning our funding and the general public thinking we no longer exist.
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Karen Nyberg, one of the astronauts currently living and working on the ISS, sent down a great video showing how she washes her hair in space. A lot of the women who go to ISS cut their hair short at some point, and it seems like all that hair would get kind of annoying to deal with. But then again, it’d be tough to cut it when you have some of the coolest space hair ever.
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This upcoming IMAX movie looks AH-mazing.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Depends on the type of internship. I’ve learned in law school, a large number of 1L students intern in courts and state attorney’s offices and don’t actually do any work – they shadow judges and lawyers, watch hearings, etc., and don’t get paid. I think this is fine, they are taking more than they give. 2L summer many law students work in firms and do actual work (if limited, as some of them split summers, 6 weeks and 6 weeks at two different employers), and they pay $3000/week, plus social events, long lunches, and other recruiting incentives. I have friends who work at the DOJ and EPA and they have legions of unpaid interns and they say most of the work done in their agency is done by them, some even are 1 year long unpaid programs, they are worried they may lose them now that they have to pay – I find that disturbing. Anyway, the whole thing is weird to me.
I love that pic of Jose and Emma too! The IMAX movie looks one that Dad will like so I will be sure to take him when/if it comes to Discovery Place!!
My first rotation at JSC was as an unpaid intern, but I did get a full quarter’s-worth of college credit. I knew it was unpaid going in, set up externally by Sally and not JSC. I can’t complain because that led to the paid co-op and then full-time positions.
i think the issue is there is extremely high unemployment and underemployment of recent college liberal arts grads that companies are using them as a source of free labor “interns” rather than actually employing them to get work, real work, needed to be done. These people are so desperate for work experience to get a real job, they’ll work for free, but it actually compounds the unemployment problem when free labor is better than paying labor.
I think there’s a distinction to be made between an unpaid internship like yours, Cari, where you got significant college credit and experience directly applicable to your field of study — vs the type of unpaid internship described here, where the students are basically doing manual labor and/or grunt work under the guise of it somehow being “educational.” It’s a fine line sometimes, but there’s a difference.
I think the real problem is probably what Becca describes. There is a place and time for unpaid internships, but there are a lot of companies basically obtaining free labor just by calling it an internship.
I understand the difference, thank you. I was merely pointing out that there are unpaid internships in places like NASA, and for me, it was a good experience that did lead to a job. I agree that many others can be exploitative.
Emma’s shirt is my favorite shirt ever.