Career Design and Internship

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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We were now nearing the end, and my next great worry was the final part of the Career Design course – getting an internship.  We were supposed to do this on our own and my stomach curdled every time I imagined appearing at any interview with an editor and the look on his or her face when I walked in the door.  I was asking to be an intern at a time when people in that office were making retirement plans.  I got quite panicky about it at times.

Prof Norman assured us it would be no problem getting an internship because basically we were offering people free work.  I did find it hard when I researched the major publications however, because most of them had their own internship programs and they did not fit the priorities of the College.  They were offering mostly three-month programs instead of the one month we were supposed to take, with their own time scales and with all sorts of things they wanted or needed to see in writers.  So the only recourse, really, was much of the smaller publications.

I sent emails to about 22 and only received 2 replies in return. Close to April, the month of internship, most of the class got placements but I and a few were still not picked up.  One of the replies I got, again, wanted a 3 month unpaid internship, which I could not afford.  The other one was a stroke of luck.  It was for a magazine called Canadian Cinematographer.  Many, many years ago I wrote regularly for a magazine called Cinema Canada and included a copy of an article I had written for them in 1981.

I received an ecstatic reply from the editor.  He had also written for them even earlier than I had, and wanted to hire me (for the internship) on the spot.  He didn’t even need to see my portfolio.  He said I had him at ‘Cinema Canada’.

So that was my internship.  Good thing was that it was very easy assignments I could do from home, and my age helped in this case because the editor was the same age and worrying about the same things I was worried about – like getting old and not having any money.  The bad thing was there was no hope of being hired for this magazine because he was the only employee and they had a very, very tiny budget.  The readership for Canadian Cinematographer is really quite small.

However, one of my assignments was to interview the cinematographer, Paul Sarossy, for the international TV series The Borgias, which is an Irish/Canadian/Hungarian co-production.  Part of my working hours counted watching The Borgias.  I got hooked on it anyways.  It was good.  It stars Jeremy Irons.  I was delighted to see that in spite of his being 62, and not really in demand as a leading man for Hollywood blockbusters much anymore, he is still a powerful presence, has that incredible voice and is still very sexy.  His body just knows how to be when making love to a woman.  I wanted to jump in and join them.

I received good marks for my internship and the editor was pleased.  He was not very pleased with the other intern he took on though.  It was someone from my class and he said he got almost no response from her.  She did not get her assignments in on time, she never submitted her reports for him to sign and send back to the College and was basically useless.  He did not tell me who it was but we were both shocked because if she had made it that far she made it through a lot of hurdles, and this was just the last stretch.  To fail the class, and not graduate because of something like this was totally self-destructive.  All I can say is I don’t understand.  But there were so many things like this I did not understand, for my two years, that even though I was shocked, I was not surprised.

The editor said that his daughter was currently on an internship as a social worker and her internship was working in a clinic for the drug-addled and mentally ill.  She completed it though, with more hours than she needed.  But for journalism I have seen the most astonishing inertia.

Anyway I am out now.  I have been kicked out of my protective nest of the last two years and here I am back again, in the non-workforce, with all my funds used up.  Although many of my experiences feel like they would never end, right now I feel like the two years sped by in the twinkling of an eye.  It seems only yesterday I was calling and emailing for work somewhere and here I am doing it again.   

However, by the end of August I will be eligible to receive my government pension and a guaranteed income supplement, which is not much, but it is something.  It may be enough for me to pursue a couple of project ideas I have. In the meantime I must find work in between and it is still so very hard to find a job.  I hope this time speeds by to August just as quickly.

One good thing about the over $10,000 debt I have accumulated for this is that those loans were given to me based on absolutely no collateral.  If I can't pay it back there is nothing they can do to me other than take away my credit cards.  That will be humiliating but the good thing about having nothing is that you have nothing to lose.

However, my next event in this adventure is to attend my convocation, wearing a cap and gown, and it’s nice that I am able to do that at last.  An awful lot that contributed to the high marks I learned in these two years is the self-education I have pursued in the last 30 years.  We shall have to see what happens from here on.