I'm two weeks into my internships and I have to say: This. Is. Awesome. I keep waiting for all the drudgery and angst and Dilbert-like ennui I've been hearing about from my working-world friends, but I've yet to cross it. Maybe it takes a few years. Wait until 2013 and I'll be singing a different tune. But for now, I can't get over how unfathomably sweet my new life is. It is making me think that everyone only talks about how terrible the non-academic working world is so that they get to keep all the goodies to themselves. And people in academia keep telling us that we are waaaay better off than the non-academic working world so one day we can take their spots and they will jump ship for the goodies, too.
Clearly this isn't true. There is no sharp academic/non-academic divide, and there are darts and laurels to both career paths. But dang! Why didn't anyone tell me how awesome this was? I have so been missing out!
I get up and have my quiet breakfast in a beautiful apartment every morning. Then I commute with my "boo," as it were. (This has its downsides - I have to force march her up the hill to catch the 9:01 metro with a few minutes to spare, which I feel only vaguely guilty about. I've been pretty clear all along that I'm going to prioritize making it to the metro over a companionable stroll - nobody makes Baby late for work. Still, I can't help but feel a teensy bit badly when a sleepy voice behind me calls out every morning, without fail, "you're walking so faaaast.")
Then I'm marching up 17th Street, and it's just, wow. This is really my life now. Upstate New York is a faded memory. I pass museums and homes and coffeehouses just going to work. I use my little swipey card thingy to get in to my building and I put my lunch in the floor fridge. At my morning internship, there is a room specifically for interns called an I-Pod (the Intern Pod), and I have my own desk and friendly neighbors. People send me emails and want to include me in team meetings, department meetings, staff meetings...lots of meetings. They appear to value my insight and trust my capabilities. They give me substantive tasks and ask me to make the most of it. When I complete tasks, they thank me. They thank me! Wow!
Most days, I get to have lunch with my partner, who is now generally awake. I get to eat lunch with her! Wow! Then I have to go to another meeting, or, three days a week, I head to my other internship. This one is made up of a very small staff and there are no meetings, but I have considerable autonomy over my tasks. Sometimes I make up stuff for me to do - whatever I think might be the most helpful. I have all this unharnessed energy that has long been missing a direction to channel it into, and now I have one. I spend all day doing little things to make these organizations run better. All tasks are measurable, direct, and have specific outcomes. Even if it's just updating a database, it's enabling a more effective large-scale operation, and that is surprisingly fulfilling. I don't have to do much to make things better - I just have to do what I do best. My life right now is made up of full-time volunteering, I guess - I'm not paid for it yet, but I can't wait for that to happen. It'll be like the cherry on a ridiculously delicious sundae.
Then, when it's over, it's over. Just like that! It's over! Wow! At the end of the internship, I just...go home. No ruminating over theories. No cramming through piles of books. No stacks of papers to grade or papers yet to be written. No dinner consumed over my laptop. No deliberations as to why I am where I am or why I'm doing what I'm doing or whether I really am going anywhere at all. No belaboring what this is costing me. It's perfectly clear where I'm going and what I'm doing and why I'm there. The clarity is bewildering to me. The presence of love is equally as stunning. It really is more than enough.
Most times in life we make drastic life changes and there are second guesses, regrets, would-haves and could-haves and should-haves. Really, when is the grass ever actually greener on the other side? For perhaps the only time in my life, I have the rare experience of a far greener pasture. I doubt the euphoria will last long - unbounded enthusiasm always burns out quickly. Maybe in a few weeks, or next year, I'll be recognizing more of myself in a Dilbert cartoon, instead of Piled Higher and Deeper. Updating a donor database won't seem so fulfilling anymore. Nor will sending out yet another bimonthly newsletter, or attending the gazillionth meeting, or getting up on Monday to do the same thing I did last week all over again.
But for now, it's like I just got paid, it's Friday night, the party is hopping, and I'm feeling right! With, um, the small exception of the "just got paid" part. So it's on! At least until the money runs out...
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