Thursday 17 April 2008

The joys of modern education mean that a degree is no longer enough to get a job; instead, if you are to have any chance of working anywhere other than behind a till at Tesco when you graduate, it&rsquo;s necessary to send begging emails and make begging phones calls to companies and request the opportunity to work for absolutely no money at all. And while if someone were to phone me and to offer to do my drudge work for free I&rsquo;d be over the moon, it is really quite difficult to find someone who will let you spend your days slaving over a hot photocopier.<br /><br />Still, I&rsquo;m here now, in the publicity department of an <em>entirely </em>anonymous publishing company, at a desk I have stolen from someone currently attending the London Book Fair, exchanging my precious time for tuition in the fine art of getting the printer to work.<br /><br />While much of the life of the work experience slave &ndash; sorry, intern; a term stolen from the Americans that makes me sound far more important &ndash; is what you might expect, the traditional diet of envelope stuffing, photocopying, and phone calls, there are perks. Firstly, the free books &ndash; because it&rsquo;s important I&rsquo;m familiar with what I&rsquo;m posting out, you understand &ndash; and secondly, the gossip. Despite the joking when I came for my interview that &ldquo;we only print PG books&rdquo;, the variety of books published by the company mean that topics in the office have touched on medieval sexual practices, dating (and why do men have such bad taste in music?), and how sex can be described using only one vowel at a time. You may be noticing a theme here&hellip;<br /><br />Luckily, in between all of that &ndash; and putting aside some time for discussing beautiful book covers - some actual work is getting done (honestly!). What I&rsquo;m learning in my time as skivvy is that publishing involves long working hours, books being promoted, and events being organised. I was genuinely surprised at both the amount of publicity generated for certain books and the level of chasing that goes into obtaining that before the final book lands in the bookshops and I hand over my money. And while the mighty interns aren&rsquo;t particularly involved in making that happen, we&rsquo;re working away in the knowledge that one day we might get to be. <br /><br />And, you know, because we can&rsquo;t find a job that will actually <em>pay </em>us. <br />

back to top

See other Gateposts in: intern , personal , publicity , publishers , work experience