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Internship Woes: Finding the Right One

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Internship is devil’s own word. It materialises during first year, solidifies in your second year, and makes you question your whole existence in the third year. In short, it is the experience you get, which makes you decide that you don’t want to do a particular kind of work if you don’t enjoy it, or you want to do it for the rest of your life because it was fun.

While interning there are several woes that a person faces which are not only downright exploitative, but also back-breaking in the amount of work and energy one has to put into it, while getting the bare minimum in return. So, an internship should not be done for the sake of doing something, you need to evaluate your interests, choices and the nature of the work before taking any decision.

The worst kind of internships are those which pay the bare minimum and stress you out so much that instead of learning anything, you feel completely drained out and exhausted. The best thing to do if you are feeling completely worn out and low is to skip it instead of holding onto it and ruining your whole summer.

The tragedy of internship situation here is that there is no fair renumeration for the work and time you put into it. Instead of learning about the organisation, you learn that the corporate world is maybe not for you.

“I joined a company, they promised me a certain amount by the end of the month. Even though some days I was unable to cope with the work pressure, they still promised to pay me the whole amount but in the end,  they backed out of the deal and didn’t even pay me the half of it.” Says a student from Kamala Nehru College.

Don’t get me started on the unnecessary promotional work that they make you do, which is not even in your job description. To all the freshers starting out, there are lot of attractive pseudo-internship offers that are nothing but companies making you do elaborate promotional work. If you are into marketing, carefully choose the company that you want to  work for. It should be authentic and legit. Your time should be valued, taken seriously and directed at things you enjoy doing.

Another student elaborates, “The work they make you do is sometimes completely opposite to what you were supposed to do. They will assign you menial chores and make you do work like filling excel sheets and documents due to which your confidence really takes a blow. At the end of the day, you don’t even feel like you have done anything productive.”

The situation is not that bleak. If you find your calling and right atmosphere, you will grow in the field that you love, while doing the work that nurtures your skills and puts them to right use. Don’t get dejected when one internship crumbles and falls apart. It just means that it wasn’t meant for you, look for another.

Feature Image Credit: Fastweb

Antriksha Pathania
[email protected]

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DUB Speak

How to Have a Productive Winter Break

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Half an academic year is over, and now you have a few weeks of leisure before the next semester begins. How can this period be utilised for maximum efficiency?

Before the season of examinations begins, and as soon as one opens their books and readings, there is a strong urge to make plans regarding the post-exam season. The mind wanders off towards things that cannot be done then- the shows and movies that cannot be watched, the restaurants that cannot be gone to, the pointless sleeping that cannot be done, and so on.

Now the word ‘productive’ has different interpretations for different people. It can mean taking up multiple internships and earning, doing social work, spending time on hobbies, and so on. But no matter what you hope to accomplish, unless it is pointless sleeping, you should set a pattern to your activities. What usually ends up happening is that with multiple priorities, we end up having only a rough idea of what we want to do. There is never any clear structure given to things. Periods like a winter break begin with a lot of hope about what all we hope to accomplish. However, with a lot of things happening in our heads, combined with the inertia we have regarding starting a task, not a lot ends up happening. We meet a few people we wanted to meet during exams, watch the same three movies rather than diversifying our tastes, and end up saying how bored we are. It needn’t be like this. After you get done with exams, you can start by making a structured layout which should include things like the order of your priorities, their urgency in terms of completion time, and the tasks you need to do in order to cater to them. Make further divisions on what you hope to achieve the most and set deadlines and timeframes for those activities, to achieve them realistically.

It’s only through making concrete, time-bound plans that you will be able to accomplish all you want this break, and nothing is more satisfying than a period where one can proudly claim of time well-spent.

 

Feature Image Credits: Law School Toolbox
Rishika Singh
[email protected]

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Features

How to Stay Productive this Winter Break

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being productive

 

Winter Breaks are those times where we lose almost all our productivity to our cozy warm bed. However, the guilt of not doing anything productive and lazying around does sink in at some point during this time. How about finding ways through which we can be unapologetically lazy and still be productive?

 

With hopes of helping you find your lost productivity even in the last leg of the Winter Break, here are some ways through which you can lay in bed all day, and be proud:

 

Reading

Very common and probably very boring to hear, reading is one amazingly easy way to stay productive. To keep yourself going with it, you need not necessarily read novels, anything, ranging from articles on some topic of interest to your Quora Digest would be perfect to keep you productive. The gains of reading may not be visible immediately, but it however, adds to one’s knowledge and eventually broadens the intellectual horizon of the reader.

 

Watching ”Good” Videos/Movies

Figuring out all what that falls under this category can be challenging whereas adhering to it can be even harder. There are some types of videos available online, that can keep you productive for quite some time during the day. For instance,Documentaries and Short Films. The internet has a plethora of documentaries and short films available on various issues to educate the viewers. Moreover, shows or movies of the Social Satire genre can be very entertaining as well as informative. In fact, all videos that educate and entertain may prove to keep you productive, but try not glueing yourself to them because, yes, they’d definitely make you lazier!

 

Not peeping into people’s Social Media Profiles

Social media “stalking”, as it is called, is one habit that must be stopped right away! Ironically, it is what almost all of us do for very long periods while browsing through the social media. But, in order to stay productive, not doing it is probably the first step we all must take in this direction. Social Media stalking reaps no positive results, instead, leads to a gradual negative change in behavior and actual waste of time.

 

Writing

We understanding how boring and/or cumbersome it may sound to many, but fret not! You aren’t supposed to write masterpieces while lazying around in bed. Just pick a pen and paper, or use your phone to write about anything, maybe your first thought about the covers you’re wearing, or what you wish to eat for dinner. Write, and put down your thoughts into words. Doing so even once in a while makes you think deeper and exercises the brain ,and the best part? Writing brings you closer to your thoughts and helps in articulating them better through spoken or written words.

 

Try one of these and tell your friends too, that lazying around does not always take you down a guilt trip, but can be productive too!

 

Happy Winter Break!

 

Priyal Mahtta

[email protected]

 

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