Interning, Earning, Working & Sacrificing

I used to think that interning for any firm in Malaysia was a waste of time for one of two reasons:

• You get treated like a slave
• You get lousy if no money at all

However, after having a couple stints at waitering and in the PR industry, I have found myself reconsidering or rather reshaping my beliefs.

SCENARIO 1

Fresh out of high school, I was eager to earn some money but still not willing to do all the traveling that is required of a professional work experience. So I thought, okay what the hell, let's do some labour work and earn money the hard way as a waiter. After all, everybody does it in their life one day or another.

So I worked in this pizza parlor called Shakey's Pizza. I admit, I wasn't the most mature of workers so my goal of course was to hope for as little customers as possible and hopefully do not get my hands dirty at all.

In waitering, I found myself rather annoyed at all the customers demands and found that I was a slave. It was then that I began to appreciate the true value of a dime as earning RM3.50 an hour was no joke. And when the cheque came at the end of the day all i got was a mere RM400, which in my view was pathetic.

SCENARIO 2

For one thing, interns hardly ever get treated like a slave as opposed to just being handed over less important responsibilities. For instance, during my first internship a lot of what I had to do was cutting, pasting, phone calls and at times even carrying stuffs from my seniors car to the office. While that may sound like a boring day at work to many, fact of the matter is somebody has got to do it. In addition to that, companies often run million dollar projects if not more, thus, would you trust an intern to handle projects that could potentially lead to a lost of a client or even worse a law suit?

However, while I did spend a lot of time doing those stuff during my internship, I also did a lot of field work and actual PR duties such as meeting with actual clients, meeting for strategy development and etc. While the environment of my internship was indeed nicer than my first try at the working world, the financial remuneration I received at the end of the day wasn't any better.

CONCLUSION

Based on those two scenarios, the one common thing was the lack of monetary benefits received on my end. So what does this mean? Should I never work in Malaysia ever again? After all, both my labour job experience and professional work experience paid rather lousily if I may so myself.

Well the answer is OF COURSE YOU SHOULD WORK IN MALAYSIA. That is because we grow up in such a instantaneous society, we tend to neglect the true value of money. Especially for people of my generation, if we wanted money we could get it straight away from our parents, ATM machines and etc.

We have to remember that all this are rather new 'techniques' that was not available to the older generation just a few years back.

Besides that, it is the work experience that counts in this instance. Having the experience imprinted on your CV, not to mention the friends you will be making will be essential to not just social life, but working life as well.

Therefore, it is the sacrifice that we make in the early parts of our lives that is set to help us earn and learn more in the future. Heck that's economics 101 for you.

(The Living Legend would like to congratulate Tiffany Leong on becoming an editorial intern with The Star)