My biggest mistake was thinking I could keep all my old habits and come out of the semester intact.
Midterms? Nothing wrong with putting off that essay. Pull an all-nighter. Napping the day after should fix everything, right?
Yeah, I thought so too.
But what happens when the next day is the longest with no breaks, not even for eating? My answer: rationing three granola bars, because buying lunch is for university students who have money and time. If the all-nighter happened on a different week, maybe I would've been fine and not exhausted, dizzy and hosting a headache and fever for three days.
Credit to Cyril Uberfuzz, Licensed via Wikimedia Commons.
Clearly, I was unfit to go to my internship.
It's understandable when you can't control the circumstances, but when there are things you can control –sleeping early, regularly eating full meals, making schedules and sticking to them– and you knowingly choose not to, you'll be a wreck at your internship. If you're in any shape to go.
Unfortunately, those weren't all the habits in need of breaking.
Are you one of those students who can't email professors questions because they complain about students emailing them stupid questions, doesn't ask questions in class, and doesn't go to office hours? I am.
And I'll be the one to tell you if you don't ask your professor for help because you're uncomfortable talking to people and don't want to bother them, odds are you won't go to your supervisor for the same reasons.
I reached that realization after I recovered from my fever, in fact.
My supervisor was absent and left me to do two things: observe a class on Medieval Europe and photograph the Medieval Europe collection. I waited for the program teacher in a classroom. Thirty minutes later and no sign of her, I photographed the artifacts. Except for the ones in the cupboard that wouldn’t open.
I did everything I could and there was five hours of my shift to go. What else could I do? Ask around the department for tasks? If I don't talk to professors or my supervisor, why would I talk to anyone in the Education Department I didn’t know? I updated artifact files instead.
Turns out, if I asked the teachers, I would've learned about that cupboard and cancelled class sooner rather than overhear about it hours later.
The asking no questions habit isn't easy to fix. I'm still working up the nerve.
So what's the point? If internships mean no more all-nighters and mustering the courage to speak to people you don't know, why bother?
The answer's different for everyone, but I do it for these:
I get to touch and learn about artifacts every Friday – how teachers gather them into a collection, how they educate people about cultures and histories, who's interested in learning about them.
Yeah, I have to deal with the workload of a student and an intern, but realizing I wouldn’t mind doing my supervisor's job someday is worth the woes.