Teen needs to miss a week at her internship this summer due to family vacation ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see the harm in asking. She can offer to work some extra hours, if that woulf make any difference. After all, she is a high schooler. I just can't believe that an unpaid, high school intern is such a critical part of an org that this would really matter. Also, OP, is the internship actually in a field that she wants to enter, or is it a resume line for college? If a resume line, a reference doesn't matter.

Voice of sanity

[Anonymous]

She didn't have to be "critical" for this plan of action to be rude. And that's what waiting until the last minute to tell people you were ditching them for a preplanned vacation is -- it is rude. The program might acknowledge time could be missed for, say, illness, but it's unlikely they meant a week's vacation planned 6 months prior and that they only found out about at the last moment.

Look, either her time there was valued, or it wasn't. It would be odd to have 74 people (and one of them with a lot of Instagram followers, too!) to compete over a worthless slot, but whatever. It was a slot that was valued by over seventy other kids, even if by nobody else.

And regardless, waiting until the last minute was rude. Rude to the company, rude to other kids who might have treated the opportunity with more grace and professionalism.

Nobody here is crying havoc and letting loose the hounds of war over it. They're just saying that it was not handled well.

It wasn't.

Hopefully everyone will do better next time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have college and graduate school level upaid interns at my job. These are very competitive spots, despite the fact that they are unpaid. I can tell you that our organization would be PISSED at an intern that pulled this. And interns have pulled things like this because they appear to not know any better. And in response, they haven't gotten jobs here. Or we've failed to give them positive evaluations. Or we've refused to serve as future references for employers and schools, etc. Acting like this has consequences. I get that this is just a high schooler we're talking about but honestly, it's parents like you that help explain why so many young people seem to suck. They have no sense of what is professional and what commitment means. You say this is a vacation that had been planned a long time ago. You also had the dates school ends and begins again a long time ago. Why didn't you parent better in this situation? When she interviewed/applied for the internship, why weren't these issues discussed within your own family? There should have been a discussion on the impact the internship would have on her end of the year, or the start of her new year, or the vacation. And if these things were incompatible, then you find another internship or opportunity. That's your role as a parent. To teach her how to handle these kinds of decisions. You do your child no favors by modeling for her that you shouldn't plan ahead or that it's "no big deal" to make commitments and then back out.

Basic professionalism = paying people for their labor. Which your outfit is not doing. That's not professional, it's exploitative. It's also enormously inequitable.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But on the other hand -- so much pressure for a HS student ? I really question that overall although different subject. It's all fine now.

OP, why did you ask if it would be okay for her to miss the time from an unpaid internship if you weren't okay with hearing "no"?

Took me awhile to understand I had no choice.

Still not sure you were ok with hearing "no" from us. A chronic health condition is a big burden. It makes life smaller, and that is how it goes. You are helping your daughter if you teach her a)how to make sure that her problem is no one else's, and b) that she isn't so special to anyone but her mom.

No one needs your input

Well, I am an adult managing a chronic condition that does present professional challenges, and it sucks. Basically, if I'm not very careful about going the extra mile to maintain a reputation for being conscientious, my periodic (and invisible) breathing issues come off like I am lazy and uncommitted. So maybe this mom and her daughter do need to hear it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It's only a meeting that she is missing. Unfortunately an important one. I'm not calling her boss for her ! This is something she has to do for herself. And to the pp who is all burned up ... You get what you pay for. Pretty entitled of you to think that college and grad students should work for free.

Not the "burned up" pp, but I also work with interns that just get a very small stipend, but I have to agree with pp. Internships are not for the benefit of the entity they're working for. At least 80% of the time, interns are more problem than they're worth from a productivity standpoint. We can talk about how unfair the system is for kids that can't afford to work for free, but that's another discussion. When a kid who is lucky enough to get a very compeitive internship shows up an announced that they're going to miss 10 or 20% of an internship because of a family vacation, I don't fuss, and I don't tell them they can't go. However, I wouldn't be inclined to hire that kid or give them a good reference. It's clear that they aren't serious and lack maturity, and are, may I say, "entitled." I would consider myself lucky to know this about your dd in advance, as I have discovered this about people after they've been hiired -- when they disappeared on vacation in the middle of big project and everyone had to scramble to fill in for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MY HS junior has accepted an internship this summer. Because school let out so late this year, the internship started before school even ended. It also interferes with a long planned family vacation. Is it OK for her to miss some time at an unpaid internship? I am worried that she will be exhausted to start the school year in the fall having no break. Anyone else in this situation and can give advice?

Just quoting the original post so we can see how far this story has come....from a long planned family vacation to a bed bound telecommuter

And the original problem was that she was missing "an important meeting." Not sure how telecommuting fixes that.

[Anonymous]

Telecommuted to the meeting.

[Anonymous]

For all of you pseudo bosses who despise interns -- you should have been happy that the intern was not there

[Anonymous]

To use DCUM logic. This "elite" (entitled ) teen should have known 6 months in advance that she * might* miss a few days and should have informed her supervisor so she could be fired in advance. Also since she was not doing anything anyway it really put every one out when she missed her busy work.
Teens today : (

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To use DCUM logic. This "elite" (entitled ) teen should have known 6 months in advance that she * might* miss a few days ...

You must have missed the part that this was a family vacation planned in January, and the company didn't find out about it until she was already on the carriage to grandma's. In June.

[Anonymous]

Most high school interns are doing nothing there anyway. I had a few of them, and they interfere with us actually doing our jobs as they can't shut up and think you should talk to them the whole time. Most of them never actually do anything. So skip away, skip away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It's only a meeting that she is missing. Unfortunately an important one. I'm not calling her boss for her ! This is something she has to do for herself. And to the pp who is all burned up ... You get what you pay for. Pretty entitled of you to think that college and grad students should work for free.

Not the "burned up" pp, but I also work with interns that just get a very small stipend, but I have to agree with pp. Internships are not for the benefit of the entity they're working for. At least 80% of the time, interns are more problem than they're worth from a productivity standpoint. We can talk about how unfair the system is for kids that can't afford to work for free, but that's another discussion. When a kid who is lucky enough to get a very compeitive internship shows up an announced that they're going to miss 10 or 20% of an internship because of a family vacation, I don't fuss, and I don't tell them they can't go. However, I wouldn't be inclined to hire that kid or give them a good reference. It's clear that they aren't serious and lack maturity, and are, may I say, "entitled." I would consider myself lucky to know this about your dd in advance, as I have discovered this about people after they've been hiired -- when they disappeared on vacation in the middle of big project and everyone had to scramble to fill in for them.

+1. a voice of sanity. Internships are usually done for the public good. Competitive ones are hard to come by. We offer them in our company to encourage young who think they want to specialize in a certain area. We have to make work for them and work hard to introduce them to people, issues and projects that demonstrate what working in this field is like. I would be truly pissed off if I had turned down 74 other kids and someone pulled this on me. I would say "sure go" but no excellent reference and I certainly wouldn't pull strings for this young lady to get her next job or internship in the field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We have college and graduate school level upaid interns at my job. These are very competitive spots, despite the fact that they are unpaid. I can tell you that our organization would be PISSED at an intern that pulled this. And interns have pulled things like this because they appear to not know any better. And in response, they haven't gotten jobs here. Or we've failed to give them positive evaluations. Or we've refused to serve as future references for employers and schools, etc. Acting like this has consequences. I get that this is just a high schooler we're talking about but honestly, it's parents like you that help explain why so many young people seem to suck. They have no sense of what is professional and what commitment means. You say this is a vacation that had been planned a long time ago. You also had the dates school ends and begins again a long time ago. Why didn't you parent better in this situation? When she interviewed/applied for the internship, why weren't these issues discussed within your own family? There should have been a discussion on the impact the internship would have on her end of the year, or the start of her new year, or the vacation. And if these things were incompatible, then you find another internship or opportunity. That's your role as a parent. To teach her how to handle these kinds of decisions. You do your child no favors by modeling for her that you shouldn't plan ahead or that it's "no big deal" to make commitments and then back out.



Basic professionalism = paying people for their labor. Which your outfit is not doing. That's not professional, it's exploitative. It's also enormously inequitable.



I'm the PP who posed the original paragraph immediately above, which some people have apparently taken offense to. I certainly can't speak for all internships, but I feel like I need to correct the idiots who have commented about my company getting "free labor." YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. We get nothing, absolutely nothing out of having these interns. We are a national non-profit in DC. We offer internships for the public good. To allow young people to see a bit of how the world works when they otherwise wouldn't. To allow them to experience it. To educate them. We spend a ridiculous amount of time prepping for these internships, working hard to find amazing experiences for these young people to enjoy, and supervising them. We make up things for them to do based solely on whether it would be meaningful for them, not what we need--like a writing assignment that they can then use as a writing sample. This isn't about free labor and it's certainly not exploitative. Every year, we have a few hundred people ask to intern with us and we take our role as educator seriously. And we hope the students who come through our doors have the common sense and good judgment to value what we are giving them. But they aren't doing any "labor"--it's just extra labor for all of us. And when you have a bright, committed student it feels worth while. And when you have a spoiled brat who acts like the world owes her something for being born a special snowflake, we wonder whether we should just cancel the intern program.

[Anonymous]

^Thank you for providing these amazing learning opportunities for our young people. I know that some folks don't seem to appreciate what you are doing but, trust me, many of us do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We have college and graduate school level upaid interns at my job. These are very competitive spots, despite the fact that they are unpaid. I can tell you that our organization would be PISSED at an intern that pulled this. And interns have pulled things like this because they appear to not know any better. And in response, they haven't gotten jobs here. Or we've failed to give them positive evaluations. Or we've refused to serve as future references for employers and schools, etc. Acting like this has consequences. I get that this is just a high schooler we're talking about but honestly, it's parents like you that help explain why so many young people seem to suck. They have no sense of what is professional and what commitment means. You say this is a vacation that had been planned a long time ago. You also had the dates school ends and begins again a long time ago. Why didn't you parent better in this situation? When she interviewed/applied for the internship, why weren't these issues discussed within your own family? There should have been a discussion on the impact the internship would have on her end of the year, or the start of her new year, or the vacation. And if these things were incompatible, then you find another internship or opportunity. That's your role as a parent. To teach her how to handle these kinds of decisions. You do your child no favors by modeling for her that you shouldn't plan ahead or that it's "no big deal" to make commitments and then back out.



Basic professionalism = paying people for their labor. Which your outfit is not doing. That's not professional, it's exploitative. It's also enormously inequitable.



I'm the PP who posed the original paragraph immediately above, which some people have apparently taken offense to. I certainly can't speak for all internships, but I feel like I need to correct the idiots who have commented about my company getting "free labor." YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. We get nothing, absolutely nothing out of having these interns. We are a national non-profit in DC. We offer internships for the public good. To allow young people to see a bit of how the world works when they otherwise wouldn't. To allow them to experience it. To educate them. We spend a ridiculous amount of time prepping for these internships, working hard to find amazing experiences for these young people to enjoy, and supervising them. We make up things for them to do based solely on whether it would be meaningful for them, not what we need--like a writing assignment that they can then use as a writing sample. Overstating yourself a bit?
This isn't about free labor and it's certainly not exploitative. Every year, we have a few hundred people ask to intern with us and we take our role as educator seriously. And we hope the students who come through our doors have the common sense and good judgment to value what we are giving them. But they aren't doing any "labor"--it's just extra labor for all of us. And when you have a bright, committed student it feels worth while. And when you have a spoiled brat who acts like the world owes her something for being born a special snowflake, we wonder whether we should just cancel the intern program.

Actually, I do know exactly what you are talking about, as I have interns also. Really, you need to calm down and take your meds. I know it is easy to be very jealous of these bright young students with their lives in front of them, while you are bitterly stewing in your own juices. But the interns will go calmly on with their lives, college and so on, leaving you far behind with just a mean recommendation not given burning up in your desk drawer, just a blurry memory to them of that angry lady at the internship. And you are still stuck there with your $.05 more than the interns salary and a fulminating anger. Not healthy.