Allow me to foreword this with one thing – I love my current internship. I’m very lucky to have it, and none of this is a reflection of my workplace. It’s a reflection of all workplaces and just one girl trying to pay her dues. It’s also my most excessive and unnecessary use of quotations ever.
The Word
“Intern” – it comes with a stigma. I’ve recently been in touch with a realtor about looking for an apartment and was doing all I could to project a professional image of someone who can afford to rent a condo. That is until he tried to add me as a connection on LinkedIn and surely saw my job title of “Media Intern”. I can only imagine he read that as “unemployed” or “can’t afford this apartment” (thanks to the popularity of unpaid internships).
At parties, when other 25-year-olds talk about recently getting a promotion, I’m talking about hoping to get hired. Despite doing perfectly adult work, just the word brings me down in social and professional situations. Which brings me to…
The Status
Just like the word “intern” comes with a stigma, it also comes with a certain lowly status. I’m not needed at company all-staffs, I’m not invited to network up-fronts, I’m not necessary in status meetings, and no salesman feels the need to woo me when my decision holds no weight. When a rep came in for a meeting, I made the mistake of introducing myself as the intern and she promptly dismissed me, only to return asking me to bring her napkins.
There is no one beneath me. I am the most junior and no one looks to me for help or an opinion (beyond ‘testing’ me or trying to make me feel included). As someone who likes to have some control, it’s excruciating to know that nothing I do will make any impact in the company. I’d like to be needed by someone here – say, an intern.
The Work
Often coined as “bitch work”, the work of an intern is basically the tasks that no paid employee wants or has time to do. Imagine having your entire career defined as “doing work that everyone hates” and that’s kind of how it is. I don’t recall ever going to school to learn how to format decks, write budget reports or file MPAs, yet it’s all I’ve done for the past 8 weeks. No one told me my job would be to literally read piles upon piles of newspapers (sidebar: “competitive” really feels like one of those “special” jobs that “only you can do”) and now my skin is perma-stained with cheap newspaper ink (thanks Toronto Sun).
That and sometimes, there just isn’t enough bitch work to go around. I’ll go hours, even days, without any assignments or (in my current case), waiting for an update on several assignments so that I can move forward. I long for the day when I come into the office and I already know what I have to do (yes, someone can indeed hit me when 6 months from now I’m crying under my desk because there’s so much work).
The Learning
I’m happy to be an intern for the learning process… in theory. As I’m constantly reminded, starting out as a (paid) intern is better than starting out as an employee because immediately the bar is lowered. I can take time to figure things out, ask questions, mess up and just not know everything all at once. Being an employee means they expect more of me and I agree that it’s good that I have a 3-month buffer to figure out all of that.
But school didn’t teach me this part. In school, if I got 90% on a media plan, it was awesome! Here, if I get 90% of a media plan right, it means that 10% of it needs to be fixed. It’s the constant correction that’s getting to me; the feeling that every time I send out a project to be reviewed, I know it will come back with someone pointing out what I didn’t do right – maybe even several times. This feeling beats you down after a while and it becomes really hard to assess whether or not you’re good at your job. And I was really banking on being great at my job, because…
The Exclusion
I know they’re not doing it on purpose, I really do, but when I first started here, I was in a social hell. People would celebrate birthdays right being my office and not even acknowledge my existence, I’m not important enough to be invited to outer-company events, and hell, to this day I’m STILL forgotten on weekly status meeting invitations. I’m not in on the office gossip and lunch invitations still feel like pity. I know some of it’s just in my head, but this was a lot easier in college where everyone just got drunk together and we were all besties.
Six Years 
We’ve all started as interns and been through what you described, so try not to let it get you down! All the colleagues around you were also, at some point, interns. And a good way to think about it is, things will only get better! Hang in there. 🙂
xO