The “summer job” vs. the “fancy internship” (revisited) « Minding the Workplace ramblinggit.com
@bradenslen A lot depends on the kind of internship. My (very poorly paid, but still paid) internships in theatre electrics departments taught me a ton. I was treated like a real employee though. Real responsibilities, doing real work, and making real connections that got me real jobs after.
@Bruce Wow, I is very cool that they paid you on your internship, because theater groups don’t make a lot of money. Good for them! All things theater are both an art and a craft that requires a lot of devotion, it sounds like they really tried to convey that to you as an intern. PS. Thanks Bruce, for commenting. It showed me that comments on Micro.blog show up on WordPress in Indieweb fashion. I wasn’t sure that would happen. Now I know and it adds to MB and Indieweb coolness. 🙂
@bradenslen It helped that, as time went on, I learned more and more from my college theatre and was eventually on staff there. So I wasn't coming in completely cold. And at most (maybe all?) LORT theatres, the internship program is pretty small. When I was at Long Wharf, I was the only electrics intern. And there were only 3 other people in the department, so I was a full member of the team and involved in every part of the process. It was probably a little exploitive as I sometimes was the sole programmer and staff electrician in the smaller space, but I learned a lot about how a large professional theatre was run. And the connections made there led to a full time job in NYC six months after my internship ended.