Knowing When To Quit (And the Con of Internships)

We all know that the publishing industry is an incredibly difficult industry to get into. There is a sense of desperation in the competition to "win" jobs that I think it's too easy for writers to eagerly jump at any opportunity presented to them without thinking it through clearly and accurately judging whether or not it's best for them. We hear so many "no"s in this business that once we finally hear a "yes," nothing else matters. And then, once we realize our mistake too late, being the one to say "no" is even more difficult. Why, in this industry, in this economy, would someone ever quit?

Well, today, I decided to quit my internship. I've been deeply cynical about internships for the past year now, and I swore I'd never intern again - especially post-graduation, but a little over a month ago, I started another one. I'm a little ashamed to say that I fell for the trap. I really hate how entering the magazine industry has become based on the question "Well, how much are you willing to sacrifice to get in?" Having one internship as an unsaid prerequisite is perfectly understandable, but the expectations have risen drastically in the past few years. Now, if you haven't been willing to work for free for years, then clearly you aren't dedicated enough to get a job. But even though you've been working for free all these years, you still don't have enough experience to deserve to be paid. The system is (and excuse my language) royally fucked up.

I had the standard internship during the summer before my senior year of college. It was at one of my favorite magazines, and I was very excited. But that internship made me completely miserable. Even though they were a small-staffed, extremely busy magazine, they didn't trust interns with anything. I spent most of the summer sitting at a table surfing the internet, bored out of mind and completely wasting my time. I can honestly say that I didn't learn a single thing there that I hadn't already in class. I left with three clips, but the experience led to nothing else. The couple of interviews I've had didn't even notice it on my resume, and had called me in based on my other experience, and all of my attempts at communication with them after the fact went completely ignored.

The experience left me cold, but after I graduated and started to meet more and more people my age in my same situation, the situation looked grim. These kids would have two, three, four, five internships on their resumes with big name magazines, or would have graduated two or three years ago and were still interning, or both. Yet they weren't getting hired, or even interviewed. If they weren't getting jobs, then what could I possibly expect with my one measly internship at an indie mag?

Reluctantly, I started considering internships again. I wasn't going to jump at any ol' internship listed on Craigslist, but a lot of them require college credit (including all of Conde Nast), so my options were limited. I only applied for one, and I ended up getting it. It was for a magazine that was well-known enough to be impressive on my resume, but accessible enough to have far more potential of being hired afterwards than fancier titles. It sounded like I'd be getting to do a lot more interesting stuff and be gaining skills I could actually use that I couldn't just as easily learn as a receptionist. I managed to sell the idea to myself pretty easily. Again, how could I say no?

By the end of the first day, I was calling my dad and best friend in tears saying I wanted to quit. It was horrible. The work was tedious, but the stress level was alarmingly high. We all tried calming myself down, chalking it up to first-day blues. It didn't get better. The more I said aloud about what the internship was actually like, the more I realized that it was straight up abusive. We worked 9-10 hour days without a break. We couldn't even have a lunch break, we had to eat at our desks as we worked. We couldn't leave the office, even to pick up lunch (it had to be delivered) or to do extra work for them that we had been assigned (because that was "a privilege and should be done on our own time"). We would get scolded for daring to try and leave when the normal 8 hour mark hit, even if we needed to go to do work we would actually be paid for. We were completely unappreciated in a different way than at my first internship. Whereas they thought we were incompetent and unfit to do anything except monkey work, this time they didn't seem to realize how much we truly held up the department. Even their attempt at a "thank you" for helping them get through the department's biggest issue of the year was tied in with asking us to get our friends to click through the website so that they would get paid more.

My spirits lifted slightly when I started getting assigned little articles. I even got sent to cover a fashion show during Fashion Week, which was definitely the highlight of the experience, and I am of course thankful for that. I figured that this was a sign of appreciation and respect, that they must've looked through my clips I had given with my application and decided I was the best writer for the job. Then, my cynical/realistic side kicked in and I realized that their motivation was simply because if they gave it to me, then they wouldn't have to pay for it. It would just be written off as a perk of the internship. This practice is what infuriates me the most about internships. If you're paying someone else to do the exact same work, then you should pay me, even if I am "just an intern." Plain and simple.

There was never a moment when I didn't wish I could quit, but I wasn't given an excuse to consider it more seriously until this week. I picked up another gig at a new magazine. It's a risk, and it won't get me rolling in dough (at least not at the beginning), but I wanted to be able to dedicate more time (and better time) to the magazine that was actually paying me. I realized that the internship was costing me a lot more than it was benefiting me. The clips were nice, but they'll be immediately replaced with this new gig. The main reason I had considered it was the possibility of getting hired afterward, but I was discovering that this possibility was still slim to none. Not only was I not getting enough out of the internship itself, but they were demanding so much time that I was actually missing a ton of opportunities that would -gasp- pay me for my efforts.

What was stopping me most was guilt. I don't like to quit, and I don't like to disappoint people or leave them on the hook. But I can't begin to describe how liberating it was to come to terms with the fact that I didn't owe them anything. I owed them even less than a paying employer. There was an expected amount of time that I was assumed to be staying, but nothing that said I actually had to. I got what I needed from them, the experience, the clips, the spot on my resume, and now it's time for me to move on. I am nervous about breaking those ties for connections and networking, but I'm not even sure how fruitful they would be anyway.

A positive aspect of my position is that I'm free to follow up on any leads that could be beneficial with little to no risk. Even the shortest of experience is not a waste. Knowing when to cut your losses is a large part of playing the game. My friend said it best in his pep-talk of a letter, "People too easily accept their situations for what they are, and there is tremendous value in having the audacity to keep rejecting what's in front of you for the chance at something better."


And if none of that convinces you, here's what really did it for me, which shows how very professional I am. If you're hesitant because of guilt, remember the time when your full time job called you as soon as you got home on a Wednesday to fire you one and a half weeks in. Remember when you went to work only to discover that you were being fired or laid off and you had to turn right around and go home again. Remember when you were told you couldn't work "for a few days" because of a mistake on their part, and then months later you were practically begging them to fix it so you could start working again and then were only given one day a week with the worst shift. Remember how none of them gave a crap about you, so why should you now give a crap about them?


Feels a bit easier now, doesn't it?