Dream Internship (Sort of*), Day 1

[laleia]

Today was pretty just one long awkward moment. Awkward moments as I stood outside my new boss's office, and wondered where he was, and whether I should hover there awkwardly, or hover somewhere else awkwardly. Awkward moments as I met new people whose names I forgot five minutes later, and tried to pretend I was interesting. Awkward moments as I decided not to point out that I wasn't stupid and didn't need things spelled out for me, on the off-chance that the things he chose not to spell out for me would be the things I actually needed spelling out for. Awkward moments as I went to the conference room for a meeting three minutes early, saw nobody there, and walked back to my cubicle to awkwardly wait for another three minutes. Awkward moments as I tried to figure out how best to ask questions, how best to point out important things my boss has forgotten to explain, how best to disguise that I am zoning out because you cannot talk to me for longer than a minute and expect me to pay attention, how to use a knife and fork (especially when I'm eating with two people who grew up and Germany and studied abroad in the U.K. and this apparently not only means they are pro at the knife, fork, move things on back of fork, thing but also means they don't switch their fork from their left hand to their right and it would be AWKWARD of I did), etc.

Did not help that last night my mom pointed out that I had to be extra-groomed, because if I looked less than perfectly, this would reflect badly on my father who not only got me my internship through nepotism* but also because they would think that my father had brought up a bad daughter if, say, I wore the wrong shoes and/or the wrong purse with my outfit.

Have I mentioned how much I hate having to watch my appearance now because it matters?

Also, I think I may do this things where I try to appear shy and nervous and cute and play into the Asian girl persona, which I know is a bad thing. After all, it is playing into steretoypes, reinforcing stereotypes, and means I will not be "taken seriously" in the workforce. The thing is, I am naturally shy and nervous and awkward (much of this awkward, I am afraid), and I realized today as I bit my lip more often and did my best to look earnest, etc., that I try to mitigate the awkwardness and any possible mistakes by appearing earnest, sincere, shy, etc., because the Asian girl stereotype also has a "You must like me, I am cute" aspect. I did not realize I did this.

And I don't even want to mention the staff meeting where I was to introduce myself, and may have made myself appear uninteresting, may have implied I got my internship through nepotism, may have accidentally insulted the artistic design people (I realize in retrospect my comment could have been taken the wrong way, although I don't think anyone did, but you never know; I realized recently that people can really take offense at things you never would have thought, that you meant jokingly but they take seriously), failed to fill in awkward silences, and spent more of my time trying to figure out what the other women were wearing, and what constituted "business casual" so I could figure out what I could and could not wear because that is not something I am asking my boss. By the way, it is so weird to refer to someone as my boss, esp. since I ... well, I don't address him for the most part, but in emails, I address him by first name.

Also, today was boring; partly because there was orientation stuff that is not done, but also because people lectured at me and talked at me, and the information was interesting but I have the attention span of a person with a very short attention span, so I would never really get what was going on, but practiced my "I am very interested in what you are saying" face a lot, and then summarized placeholder articles -- very much like the way I write papers, actually.

Hopefully I did not make a total fool of myself, and figure out how to log my hours so I can get paid, and move on to the more interesting stuff, which despite being (boring) research, will be in different languages, and do cool stuff in French and Chinese; but for now, it is learning about the communications stuff which I have no background in and actually need to learn, but learning is boring, and I am done.

*It's not my dream internship, but for the "Oh my god, it's June and I don't have an internship, I'm so screwed" portion of my life, it was the next best thing. In fact, if I had gotten something like this last month, or the month before, or the month before, I might have classified it as a Dream Internship, too.

**It was, like 99% nepotism, 1% my ability. I found the job posting, he forwarded my resume, and then I was pretty much a shoo-in at the interview. My boss REALLY, REALLY liked my writing sample, which would have boosted that 1% up to 10-15%, maybe even 25% (at the very most, I would think, except he kept on telling everybody that my writing sample was really good, poss. because he may have been trying to convince them it wasn't nepotism) except that he read it after the decision had already been made ... thus the nepotism.

Comments

[theladyrose.livejournal.com]

It's always tough in the beginning, when you're just grateful to have an internship and hope that they're not going to regret their decision to hire you and fire you when you don't meet their expectations. Sometimes you have to learn how to work the system to your advantage and play upon the more "favorable" aspects of the APA female stereotype (diligent, intelligent) and work yourself into a position where you can then negotiate and seriously be treated by your colleagues. Believe me, they remember how awkward it can be being the newbie on the job. I hope that you get to do the cool translation stuff soon!