Hello.  Long time lurker, first time poster.  I completely agree with
Brigid's and Lisa's comments and offer my own inane ramblings as a "me too!"
comment.   I'm an anonymous grad student, and I had a bad experience at the
XYZ museum, and a great experience at the ABC museum.

Indigo, you suggest that interns want money and a job from their internship.
I disagree.  I got a stipend from my internship at the XYZ museum, but I
knew about a week into my internship that I did not want a job there.  But I
do want to feel like I'm part of the staff, if only for a short period of
time.  As far as I could tell, my internship boss did not tell the rest of
the staff why I was there.  This brings up two points: 1) I had a feeling
that my internship boss did not want to be bothered with me, or did not have
the time to teach me.  2)  The staff, not knowing why I was there, did not
want me there.  The first week that I was there, the boss asked one of the
staff if I could help on a project.  The staff member said "No, we don't
need any more help."  On the other hand, one of the staff members at ABC saw
me working on a project and told me to gather my supplies and go to her
office, where she taught me step by step what to do, and (more importantly)
why I was doing it.  So, I guess I'm saying that interns need to be
supported by the entire staff, not just one intern coordinator.

When I intern, I want experience.  I could say that I want to help the
museum in some way, but that's not entirely true.  The XYZ museum had me
sitting in a room, doing remedial tasks for two weeks.  While I understand
that papers need to be filed, objects need to be numbered, and copying needs
to be done, those aren't graduate level training opportunities.  The boss
had my resume, he knew my background and yet I was not being challenged.
(There was a Washington Post article a while back that listed boredom in the
workplace as the worst possible staff demotivator.)  Now, I'm not suggesting
that I should be running the show, but I was not there to do the jobs that
other staff members neglected.  In short, I wanted good stories (or
experiences) from the internship.  Something along the lines of "I picked a
moth casing off a vest before building a proper storage box to protect it
from future pest damage" instead of "I spent 40 hours writing tiny little
numbers on tiny pieces of pottery."

My internships have all been about a semester long (that's about 4 months).
When I leave, I want to feel that I have learned everything that there is to
learn about that department, because chances are that I will not get a job
there, but the experiences from that internship might land me a job in
another institution.

~ E P

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