Success means getting up out of your seats
As part of my daily routine of scouring the internet for news and comment related to Kyrgyzstan, tourism, the Hospitality Industry, and Trivia, I recently came across an article containing an interview given by a professor about his college’s programme of internships.
The term intern always causes me some difficulty. It summons up images of doctors in hospitals in TV series like Emergency Ward 10. This is partly because, when I grew up back in the UK, this was the only place we ever really came across the term. It seemed to refer to students who had recently qualified but were gaining experience – people on the bottom rung of the ladder.
The first time the term seemed to force itself on my consciousness in a more general context was the infamous Monica Lewinsky case. She was an intern working in the Clinton White House. One again the image of Doctors in white in white coats sprung into my mind, but it didn’t seem to fit in this case. So I looked around and discovered that it basically meant the same as we called “work experience”.
Internships are a system of on-the-job training, mainly for what are termed “white-collar jobs”, similar to an apprenticeship – which is a system I was well acquainted with as mainly of my school friends left school to take up an apprenticeship in engineering firms back in Malvern.
Interns are usually college or university students, but they can also be high school students or post graduate adults seeking skills for a new career; they may also be as young as middle school students in some areas.
The idea is to give students experience which will give them a feeling for and understanding of the professional world of work – covering issues such as: Time keeping; Health and Safety and Personal Interrelationships, as well as seeing how what they learn in school, college or university has application in the “real world” and providing valuable information to include on a CV.
It is often an integral and compulsory part of a course of study. It can be paid, but usually is not. As such, it offers employers with cheap or free labor for (typically) low-level tasks. For both the employer and the internee, it can sometimes provide an introduction which can lead to future employment.
Here it is called Practica.
We have several students on Practica every year. Some have been merely “going through the motions” and failed to impress in anything other than their lack of initiative and drive. Others have shown themselves to be responsible, reliable and hard working, eager and willing to learn and also to contribute to the success of the enterprise. They take pride in what they do and being able to achieve something worthwhile and make a difference.
The thing that caught my attention in the article was the answer to the final question, which was the usual catch all, “any final thoughts or recommendations?”, and was “Success means getting up out of your seats.”
This is something that I have long held, and advice I have often given to people, although it is often phrased in different terms:
- Maths is not a spectator sport
- It’s down to you
- The world doesn’t owe you a living
- It’s important to show that you have done something to help yourself
- Those who sit on their hands don’t achieve anything
- You get out of life what you put into it
… and so on.
There’s a temptation, and even a tendency, tendency to take literally Jesus’ words, “Ask and you shall receive … “, but life isn’t like that.
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Bishkek