Internship.

I’m writing this at work while waiting to be given something to do (posting and editing at home, obviously). The thing is, it’s not that I don’t have anything to do – I do, in fact, have three separate tasks that I’ve been assigned to work on. The problem is that all these three tasks currently require input from other people, and until I get that input, I really can’t do anything besides stare into space, or use up my mobile data.

Of course, it’s still early days, so I really should be grateful for all this free time that I currently have. It’s been almost a month into my internship at this bank headquarters in KL, and it’s only normal that I haven’t been given any really complicated work as of yet. We’ll just take it one step at a time, which is fine by me. At least it promises to be better than the internship stories I’ve heard of months of doing nothing but making copies, filing and other things like that. I’ll just have to remain patient for the time being, that’s all. My classmate, in comparison, spends her days mostly playing video games on her laptop since the place she's interning at barely gives her any work to do.

I went back to my university the day before I started internship to take care of a few things. Most of the other students were on sem break, so the place was almost empty – it was reminiscent of the early days of Manipal when we hardly had any students. Next week, I will be heading back again, this time after the sem has started and after the students have returned from their holidays, as the MQA is coming to interview staff and students as a requirement for my course to be awarded full accreditation.

People have been texting me to ask how things are with internship thus far, and there are bound to be more questions of that nature when I go back. I’m half-torn: I kinda want to just hide out somewhere on campus and only come out for the MQA interview so as to avoid answering the same questions over and over, but at the same time I also kinda want to meet my college friends, some of them possibly for the last time.

Hiding just seems a bit extreme and overly antisocial, though, so I guess I’ll find a spot somewhere in the library and just sit there all day. I’m bound to meet some people there, but (hopefully) not so many of them that I end up getting overwhelmed by too much human interaction. That’s really not too different from what I used to do before I went for my internship, then, to be honest.

Speaking of differences, working life is, of course, a lot different from student life. I’m only less than a month into internship, and I haven’t exactly tasted much of working life yet, but it really is a new world. For instance, people here seem to be busy all the time, and hardly have time to do anything else, including socialize – it’s as if almost no one in this department even goes out for lunch together. As a student, things were really relaxed, and you literally had time to get to know everyone (in Manipal, anyway; it’s not a big place).

However, I’m still unable to decide whether I prefer working or studying more. I always liked keeping myself busy back then, and I would often put my non-academic projects ahead of my actual studies (while at the same time not neglecting them, of course). I guess it’s still too early to tell; let’s wait until things get really hectic before I make a decision.

Come to think of it, it’s not that that decision would matter, anyway. Throughout my life, I’ve just taken things as they've come. I’ve done what I've needed to do. It doesn’t matter if I’d rather be studying than working when what I need to do is work. I guess the best thing to do is just to take a neutral stand. That will save me a lot of needless stress in the future.