Of Internships and Attention-Seeking

Lately, my newsfeed has been peppered with statuses that rant, whine or boast about internships. So I thought I'd use this space to brag about mine. As if. Rather, I'm going to elaborate on how internships have conveniently divided people into lame categories.

Before this semester actually came to an end, people had started putting up statuses like 'Citibank or SBP?' or 'Sanofi or PnG?' These poor confused individuals were really meant to be sympathized with. Not only were these (un)lucky people getting more internship offers than they could keep track of, but they absolutely needed all one thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two people in their Facebook friends' list to advise them. What ensued (for obvious reasons) was a long list of notifications where half the people would have posted random comments ( Yaar kaisay ho tum, itnay time sae milay nahin) and cracked lame jokes, (Yaar! Kitni jaga pae pawwa hai tumhara?!) but not offered any suggestions. Nevertheless, the Confused Retard would track the number of not-so-helpful recommendations using a tally chart and then generate a bar chart on MS- Excel for the most popular bank/company (ratings would be high for places with the highest number of hot female employees people knew of). Where they finally decided to go is still a mystery (no attention seeking status followed), causing many to wonder whether the multiple internship offers had even been received at all.

Once the term ended, my batch had to attend a compulsory MBR conference. This presented many with the opportunty to whine incessantly about how ''My internship starts this week/ JUST A DAY after the exams!'' While this resulted in a lot of petting and clucking about the misfortunate people who had to work abhi sae, the woeful whiners secretly revelled in the prospects of how they would be done early and would feel sorry for those who would be slaving away in Ramazan. Little did they know that internees ( at least I) will get off at 3 then. Tch tch.

This retardedness did not quell once the first week of vacations started. The I-Work-Harder-Than-Thou Competition began. This loser in my class bragged about how three of his ideas had already been approved for future financial products, and that he would be getting a stipend of Rs. 12,000 PKR. Since this is a paltry amount compared to what I earn at AH in a month, I remained unimpressed. Also, hardly anyone would believe that an internee would receive double the regular stipend. People who make up lies should at least make up believable ones.

People can be so ridiculous. This one guy I know ditched a fairly good internship because 'they were making me do such a big project and the stipend was so low!' He promptly ditched a good opportunity to learn in favour of a lousy internship with is more of a summer camp, with free food as the only consolance. A regular query seems to be 'How much are they paying you?' Yes, I totally understand how everyone needs money to fill the empty stomachs of their five hungry children. But I fail to understand how a stipend that is Rs. 500 less than anyone else's will make a dent in your pocket.

This is also the time of the year when fashion freaks like my sister have a chance to shine, or rather whine. She spent endless days poring over the multitude of dresses in our wardrobe, complained that she had 'nothing to wear' and ended up flooding our already crammed wardrobe. The Summer Internship Collection rage has caught on now. And yes, we won't be needing to make her a bridal trousseau anymore.

Lastly, there are those who feel that it is their duty to inform us of what they have been having for lunch. Internship pictures are being used to convey the exact degree of oil in each company cafetaria's biryani so that we can create a benchmark for the biryani in the IBA cafetaria. Albums also contain close-ups of the insides of ice-cream cups so that everyone can gauge the amount and colour of ice-cream being doled out (and feel sad about having to pay for their food. Namely me).

The only thing I WILL brag about is the access card I received on Thursday. Because not only does it have a decent picture on it, it opens up doors too.