You’re going to study literature and get a job doing what? Literaturizing?

Back in February, when I was fiercely dumping my resume into the enigmatic e-mail depth of publishing HR departments, never receiving a single goddamn response, I started applying to anything and everything I could get my hands on. Now it is the month of June and I am finally hearing back from a company that produces informational posters for medical waiting rooms. I thought nothing of it until I clicked on their link and read the following sentence, from an article about a psychiatrist who treats her patients through brain music therapy:

"The treatment was born when a group of clinicians, researchers, mathematicians, and musicians translated different ratio of brain wave rhythms into musical frequencies by using 18 transformation algorithms for 120 musical instruments."

What does that sentence even mean? Why 18 and not 19 transformation algorithms? And what in the world is a transformation algorithm? It sounds like witch’s brew, complete wackos. I had to meet these wackos.

And so yesterday I went on a job interview. Wait. Let me rephrase that: Yesterday I went to an interview for an internship, at a medical poster company. But give me some credit, I’m not cheating on my new job, that I started only three weeks ago; I just had nothing better to do on my lunch break.

I thought, at the very least, they would send me away with a goody bag of various prescription drugs to use at my own disposal. I had imagined an office full of new age hippies, oriental rugs, and employees wearing mahjong tile earrings and thinly veiled layers of boho gear.

When I arrived for my interview, I was sorely disappointed. It was just a normal office, with average-looking employees and no sign at all of free prescription meds. And my new, fake prospective bosses were kinda cute. One of them had this Christian Bale thing going on, except with curly, blond hair, and the other had a slight resemblance to Dermot Mulroney, except with less hair.

Once we began the interview, I realized that they were serious: they wanted me, a 24 year-old, post grad, to intern for their poster company. They offered a small stipend, heaps of “experience” and a metro card.
“Is it an all access card?”
“No.”

They explained to me that there were over 200 applicants for the Mediabistro listing they posted back in February and that they just now narrowed it down to a ten lucky few. They made it seem like it was an honor for me to be there.

Now. What in the hell is going on around here? This is a sad state of affairs for all the post grad English majors floating around this city. There were 200 of us applying for the same internship. This is not an internship at The New Yorker; it’s a 36X48 inch poster. So, someone asks what you do for a living. Oh. I work for a poster, for free. Consider your readership: Every week, your writing would appear in waiting rooms across the country, where phlegmatic hypochondriacs and Alzheimer patients would read your articles if only to be distracted by stale issues of Newsweek. (Need I insert the quip here about how the Alzheimer patients would only forget your writing after about twenty minutes?) And what these guys were telling me is that over 200 people wanted to work for them, for free. Really.

Let’s back up for a second. Before we were all pegged as the "Entitlement Generation," before the influx of English majors in the workforce made it socially acceptable for employers to enlist desperate graduates as slave labor, and before parents agreed to support their precious babies in this time of dire need, there were no internships. My parents never did an internship and the same could be said for the Baby Boomer Generation. This is because the only people originally meant to do internships are the doctors. Doctors do internships because once they complete their internships, they are fully prepared to save lives and they get paid a lot of money to do so. That’s real money, not metro cards.

One only has to examine the role of the economy in relation to that of the intern. For the Baby Boomers, they had no other choice but to find valid jobs. As a result, they were able to build substantial incomes and raise children who would be able to afford the luxury of doing other people’s grunt work for free. Maybe also it is a question of work ethic? In the olden days, perhaps, the executives were more willing to spend longer hours doing their own grunt work? I don't know.

And yes, maybe I do feel a little entitled. Yet I consider it more a matter of pride than entitlement. I did everything the right way; I held three internships throughout my college career and now that I have been out of college for over a year, I feel that I deserve a real job that pays me real money. If I’m not getting paid for it, I do not feel I should have to stand at a copy machine for twenty hours a week while a couple of spoon flipping 30-somethings take credit for my work.

So anyway, that’s how I feel and that’s why I thanked them for their time, grabbed a sandwich, and went back to my real job. Maybe, though, maybe if they had offered me some pills in addition to the subway pass, I would have accepted that internship.