Let me tell you about the amazing people working for free in my office this
summer:

I have 2 post grad students (former interns), 4 grad students, 5 undergrads, 4
high school students, and 2 volunteers all working on resume-building projects
in my office! With the exception of three of the high school students who are
receiving stipends through programs outside of our institution who placed
these students with me, not one is being paid! Their projects include:
cataloging an entire collection of more than 1000 objects for her MA thesis;
drawing pictures of our furniture for scanning and future use on a myriad of
projects; designing and making period costumes for our historic house "room
exhibits;" research on people associated with our house for oral history
interviews; recycling old exhibits into "suitcase exhibits" for audiences
ranging from schools to retirement homes; researching collections for the
development of self-guided tour handouts, or interpretive strategies for the
house; and assisting me in the development of our next new gallery exhibit.

They come in every day that I let them, not just on time, but early, and then
they stay late! They take advantage of every extra-curricular event they are
told about. They seem to be in disbelief that i want them to think, and each
one is creative and enthusiastic.

Now, don't think I'm letting interns with no experience run amok in the
collections! In order to work with collections, they must have had some
previous classwork, or experience. For those that have none, well, we needed
to store a ton of silver that one of the grad students had cataloged. So, I
arranged a "silver cleaning party." We all sat around, learned about silver
making, and cleaning, and as a team, finished the job in a matter of hours.
Guess what - now each of them has at least some object handling experience.
Experience is like credit - you can't get it until you have it, but how do you
get it? You volunteer, intern, whatever you want to call it. Pure and simple.
But while you are there you get experience. If you are volunteering at a place
where you are chained to the copier - LEAVE. Shoot, come work with me.

But, I must say two things: "shame on museum professionals who use interns to
copy and fax!" Get up from your chair and do it yourself - you probably need
the excercise. Secondly, supervising interns is HARD! It's time consuming,
it's a TON of paperwork, and it is exhausting to be inspiring and focused on
so many different people doing so many different things simultaneously. But,
it is SO worth it when they ask if it's ok to stay on past their "260 hours"
required for their 3 credit internship, or when they write you thank you notes
for letting them intern with you, and especially when they bake you yummy
chocolate-peanut butter fudge brownies for your birthday!!!


My motto to my interns is "your internship is about you. If you are not having
fun, it's not working. If you are not adding TONS to your resume, it's not
working." And another thing, my interns are Curatorial Assistants, Researchers
(if they are not getting credit, but are career oriented), Exhibit Development
Assistants, and Collection Management Assistants. If that's what they are
doing, then that's what they are called.

Thanks for listening,

- Adrienne