So, first day as an intern, eh? Man have I got a story to tell you. Let's take it from the top.
My tummy declared war on me at 6 o'clock. It was my first day as an intern at UN Women and I was terrified. I tend to keep people at an arm's distance at all times, so I didn't really have any of those chummy buddies to calm my nerves and tell me everything's gonna be alright. Instead, it was a lot of breathing exercises and walking around the house while my detaching mechanism locked and loaded. I had to leave as soon as I could because the internship was a governorate and a half away. And leave early I did. I got lost in the subway because I made the mistake of trusting the system, and had four more stations to add to my already long commute, then had to change lines twice to get to my destination, topped off with a cab ride. I was squished and couldn't reach my hands, let alone call in to explain why I was late, so I figured what the hell, I'm an intern, it's my job to fuck things up the first day, I'll just leave an hour early.
Three hours later I was there. You know how all these sitcoms portray your first day on the job as a series of unfortunate events, throwing in tarantulas and broken down facilities, with a possibility of setting the office on fire? Well, turns out they weren't exaggerating for comic relief. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The security at the foot of the building was as thorough as they could possibly get, I was surprised they didn't go through my shoes for explosive material. They gave Scrooge McDuck a run for his money; mines, catapults and all, for yours truly was the evil witch come for his first lucky coin. They rummaged through all that could be rummaged through, confiscated all that could be confiscated, and ruffled the rest for the heck of it. By the time I was done with that, I looked like a poodle fresh out of a car wash. Then the fat lady sung, I was there and it was happening.
I walked into the office on the sixth floor. Again, the sitcoms weren't exaggerating. Codes for the door, flags for the wall and each head was matched with a plant, a stapler and a monstrous printer-scanner contraption that demanded paper munchies. I was clueless, of course, so I walked straight to the first person I ran into, who I later found out to be a fellow Italian intern that called dibs on the reception desk for funsies and was later chained there by the director to take calls. Halfway through mumbling 'Hello, I'm here for the internship', an old lady with short black hair and ominous stilettos swooped in and snatched me for a quick investigation. The director, a lady who sent out electromagnetic waves of intimidation that x-ray your bones for incompetence shrapnel rained me with questions about my person, use and whereabouts, she was interrupted by calls and flew off to her nest on top of the nearest mount of doom to take them. I was more or less nailed to the ground by what remained of her presence, only to have the Guido come and slap me out of my noob trance. The Nazgul had finished her calls and came back in time, and they both took my supervisor's number and called her. Turns out she had to go to the bank on a Monday and the bureaucratic overlords claimed her soul, so she might be a little late. She relegated me to the Guido after a phone call of nods and yeses. He hung up, my training began.
But not quite. He was an quadrilingual Italian know-it-all that had a tendency to gesture theatrically, with spaghetti hair, a last name that was Italian for spaghetti hair and a colorful patchy vest. He gave me a tour of the offices on both floors, which was interrupted when he was called into one of the offices and assigned a task for materializing in front of their wishful door. It was going to be a long day, I understood that much, so get off on the right leg I must. I went into the kitchen, made coffee and retreated to the roof - which doubled as the second floor of offices - for a smoke.
I took my time, finished the coffee, had a few smokes and went back to the kitchen. I walked into a conversation between the guido, an officious-looking bald giant and a bling-choked diva with flowy black hair. They stopped talking and stared blankly at me. I broke the silence with an apologetic "I'm new here", to which they broke out in laughter. I was confused. The bald giant walked out still chuckling to himself, and the diva walked the kitchen runway to introduce herself, then asked me if I'm the new graphic designer. I don't know, I said, I'm the new intern but I can design. From that moment on, I was her bitch.
She was friendly though, they all were, don't get me wrong, except for the Nazgul, she was just there to scare the working momentum into motion. I followed the diva into an empty meeting room and she put down her stuff and started talking while working. It was a vision, multitasking at its most divine stage. She was doing a presentation, researching for her dissertation, talking to her boyfriend and ranting about her boyfriend to me, to which I just sat there listening and trying to figure out what it was I should be doing. I took the presentation off her hands to appease my workaholic tendencies, and she replaced the slot with another task that was on her pending list. Her laptop was hard to tame; it was a constantly beeping creature that kept popping messages at me while humming to itself. In my head it was furry, although I'm sure it wasn't, but it was pink. I immersed myself into the research and presentation, which was about great Egyptian women of achievement. She occasionally broke into my trance to interject anecdotes about the women I'm writing about, and I'm not gonna lie to you I was already daydreaming if I'll ever do half of what they did with their lives. Three hours later, I started seeing pixels, so I retreated to the roof for another smoke.
And god I wish I hadn't.
Little did I know that was all the work I would be doing today when I sat smack into a puddle of water that had mysteriously collected on my chair. So there I was, on my first day on a bigass internship at the UN Women HQ, looking like I peed myself.
I was gonna be there for while. Drying my butt in the sun. The roof was empty, so I chainsmoked, answered messages and updated social networks. My little accident gave my friends quite the giggle, but trying to hire an assassin in monthly installments and begging for a mercy kill didn't work and they were supportive as they always were. Not that I believed this kind of thing 'happens to all of us', but I was a klutz and I was okay with it. I inspected the bathrooms for blow dryers, turned out feminists didn't really acknowledge their existence, much like yours truly. Drying my butt in the sun was taking too long, and I had to get back to work. So I had to come up with another strategic plan: Butt toast.
So there I was, sitting on a sunny hot spot on the roof to the sound of my sizzling butt, when a lady walked out of the second-floor offices to take a call. Shit shit shit, I thought as I smiled in her general direction. She finished the call and came up to me all smiles. What's wrong, she asked with a hand on my shoulder. She seemed friendly, and frankly anything was friendlier than the Nazgul. Are you a nice person, I asked. She burst out in giggles and said she was, warming up to me. I shared my little incident and we chatted as my butt considerably dried off, then she had to get back to work.
I had to get back to work too, and that's when it hit me. Why hide it out here when I can shake it off and get a little laugh out of it? And laugh it off, I did. I walked into the office after a two-hour disappearance with an orange butt stain. It did not go unnoticed, and thanks to my butt I made two new friends. I worked some more then I called my supervisor to check if she was coming in today, turns out she wasn't. I updated her about my tasks and she assigned me 242387492387493 designs I had to get done in three days, then said she'll be at an event at a hotel for the next couple of days and told me when I could come and help out. For now, I could head home.
It was a long way home, so I ordered food, although in this context I should better call it sustenance. The italian made the call, and I had to stifle the urge to giggle as he busted out his Arabic vocabulary in the most hilarious word choreography I heard ever since Andy said his vows. One of the directors was nice enough to bring out treats for us lost puppies since it was our first day and all, and I got to see an office fight! Diva accidentally closed Guido's tabs and he broke out in the most stereotypical fit possible, a fluent range of Italian slurs worthy of a youtube video.
Three hours later, I was home. I was broke, mortified and exhausted, but my first day as an intern was in the bag and I had three months to go. I passed out for 14 hours, woke up to a thousand notifications of people laughing at me, and I'm laughing along.
And that's how you intern, bitches. Cheers!
My tummy declared war on me at 6 o'clock. It was my first day as an intern at UN Women and I was terrified. I tend to keep people at an arm's distance at all times, so I didn't really have any of those chummy buddies to calm my nerves and tell me everything's gonna be alright. Instead, it was a lot of breathing exercises and walking around the house while my detaching mechanism locked and loaded. I had to leave as soon as I could because the internship was a governorate and a half away. And leave early I did. I got lost in the subway because I made the mistake of trusting the system, and had four more stations to add to my already long commute, then had to change lines twice to get to my destination, topped off with a cab ride. I was squished and couldn't reach my hands, let alone call in to explain why I was late, so I figured what the hell, I'm an intern, it's my job to fuck things up the first day, I'll just leave an hour early.
Three hours later I was there. You know how all these sitcoms portray your first day on the job as a series of unfortunate events, throwing in tarantulas and broken down facilities, with a possibility of setting the office on fire? Well, turns out they weren't exaggerating for comic relief. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The security at the foot of the building was as thorough as they could possibly get, I was surprised they didn't go through my shoes for explosive material. They gave Scrooge McDuck a run for his money; mines, catapults and all, for yours truly was the evil witch come for his first lucky coin. They rummaged through all that could be rummaged through, confiscated all that could be confiscated, and ruffled the rest for the heck of it. By the time I was done with that, I looked like a poodle fresh out of a car wash. Then the fat lady sung, I was there and it was happening.
I walked into the office on the sixth floor. Again, the sitcoms weren't exaggerating. Codes for the door, flags for the wall and each head was matched with a plant, a stapler and a monstrous printer-scanner contraption that demanded paper munchies. I was clueless, of course, so I walked straight to the first person I ran into, who I later found out to be a fellow Italian intern that called dibs on the reception desk for funsies and was later chained there by the director to take calls. Halfway through mumbling 'Hello, I'm here for the internship', an old lady with short black hair and ominous stilettos swooped in and snatched me for a quick investigation. The director, a lady who sent out electromagnetic waves of intimidation that x-ray your bones for incompetence shrapnel rained me with questions about my person, use and whereabouts, she was interrupted by calls and flew off to her nest on top of the nearest mount of doom to take them. I was more or less nailed to the ground by what remained of her presence, only to have the Guido come and slap me out of my noob trance. The Nazgul had finished her calls and came back in time, and they both took my supervisor's number and called her. Turns out she had to go to the bank on a Monday and the bureaucratic overlords claimed her soul, so she might be a little late. She relegated me to the Guido after a phone call of nods and yeses. He hung up, my training began.
But not quite. He was an quadrilingual Italian know-it-all that had a tendency to gesture theatrically, with spaghetti hair, a last name that was Italian for spaghetti hair and a colorful patchy vest. He gave me a tour of the offices on both floors, which was interrupted when he was called into one of the offices and assigned a task for materializing in front of their wishful door. It was going to be a long day, I understood that much, so get off on the right leg I must. I went into the kitchen, made coffee and retreated to the roof - which doubled as the second floor of offices - for a smoke.
 |
| It was gonna be a good day. |
She was friendly though, they all were, don't get me wrong, except for the Nazgul, she was just there to scare the working momentum into motion. I followed the diva into an empty meeting room and she put down her stuff and started talking while working. It was a vision, multitasking at its most divine stage. She was doing a presentation, researching for her dissertation, talking to her boyfriend and ranting about her boyfriend to me, to which I just sat there listening and trying to figure out what it was I should be doing. I took the presentation off her hands to appease my workaholic tendencies, and she replaced the slot with another task that was on her pending list. Her laptop was hard to tame; it was a constantly beeping creature that kept popping messages at me while humming to itself. In my head it was furry, although I'm sure it wasn't, but it was pink. I immersed myself into the research and presentation, which was about great Egyptian women of achievement. She occasionally broke into my trance to interject anecdotes about the women I'm writing about, and I'm not gonna lie to you I was already daydreaming if I'll ever do half of what they did with their lives. Three hours later, I started seeing pixels, so I retreated to the roof for another smoke.
And god I wish I hadn't.
Little did I know that was all the work I would be doing today when I sat smack into a puddle of water that had mysteriously collected on my chair. So there I was, on my first day on a bigass internship at the UN Women HQ, looking like I peed myself.
 |
| Good day, it was NOT gonna be. |
I was gonna be there for while. Drying my butt in the sun. The roof was empty, so I chainsmoked, answered messages and updated social networks. My little accident gave my friends quite the giggle, but trying to hire an assassin in monthly installments and begging for a mercy kill didn't work and they were supportive as they always were. Not that I believed this kind of thing 'happens to all of us', but I was a klutz and I was okay with it. I inspected the bathrooms for blow dryers, turned out feminists didn't really acknowledge their existence, much like yours truly. Drying my butt in the sun was taking too long, and I had to get back to work. So I had to come up with another strategic plan: Butt toast.
 |
| Not your average sunbathing experience. |
 |
| Not your average work selfie. |
I had to get back to work too, and that's when it hit me. Why hide it out here when I can shake it off and get a little laugh out of it? And laugh it off, I did. I walked into the office after a two-hour disappearance with an orange butt stain. It did not go unnoticed, and thanks to my butt I made two new friends. I worked some more then I called my supervisor to check if she was coming in today, turns out she wasn't. I updated her about my tasks and she assigned me 242387492387493 designs I had to get done in three days, then said she'll be at an event at a hotel for the next couple of days and told me when I could come and help out. For now, I could head home.
It was a long way home, so I ordered food, although in this context I should better call it sustenance. The italian made the call, and I had to stifle the urge to giggle as he busted out his Arabic vocabulary in the most hilarious word choreography I heard ever since Andy said his vows. One of the directors was nice enough to bring out treats for us lost puppies since it was our first day and all, and I got to see an office fight! Diva accidentally closed Guido's tabs and he broke out in the most stereotypical fit possible, a fluent range of Italian slurs worthy of a youtube video.
 |
| Yes, I sneaked a picture. |
And that's how you intern, bitches. Cheers!
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