Unpaid, work-related depression.

As I was flipping through the New Yorker in my therapist's waiting room this morning, I came across a cartoon that struck a nerve:

"Hey! How about a little something for the intern?"

At first, I chuckled and posted it to my Facebook, where it immediately started getting "likes." Most people I know have been in that position. My age group is stuck in an awful rut of unemployment and unpaid work. I've had three internships so far; only one was paid, and that's rare. The major criticism of the unpaid internship is that it boils down to slave labor, which is illegal and immoral. The counter to that is while there's no monetary compensation, the employer provides valuable experience to the intern which will lead to better paying jobs down the road. Then there's the whole side of receiving college credit for a job. I don't think any of it is remotely fair, but the fairness and legality of it all is beside my point. What really gets me is the crushing lack of self-worth when there's no tangible evidence of appreciation for the work I do.

My experiences have led me to believe that a paycheck is more than a fair exchange of money for services. It's also an affirmation. I can't be sure, as I've only had one job in my life that wasn't under the table, but I think a paycheck is a company's way of saying to an employee, "We appreciate that you work here and that you contribute to our success. We appreciate that you pay for gas or train fare to get here on time each day. We appreciate that you sometimes have to do the painfully boring but vital work that keeps us running. Thank you for swallowing your frustration. We value you."

I will never equate my self-worth with the size of a paycheck; I'm wise enough to understand there's more to life than money. But when my paycheck is literally nothing, it's hard to feel valued. Yes, I'm verbally thanked all the time, but the "thank you"s start to feel like a stark, watered-down acknowledgment of my work when that's all I get. It's also hard to feel motivated to do well when there's no discernible reward for good work or consequences for slacking. It's no big deal to my employer whether I'm good at my job or not; I'll be out in a few months and replaced by someone else.

To help demonstrate how awful it can feel, here are two contrasting experiences I've had:

At one job I held in public relations, I was the only intern in the department and my boss sat down with me at least once a week to explain what the department was doing at the time, why, and how my work fit into it all. She taught me how to write good press releases, how to pitch stories to the press, what was worth pitching and why, and so on. She put a lot of her time into my personal and professional growth while I worked for her. She kept in touch after I left and notified me when she saw another paid opportunity come up that might be good for me, which I applied for and accepted.

At another smaller organization, there were more interns than there were staff members. Our job training mostly consisted of a binder full of instructions, and a day or two of coaching by the old interns that we were about to replace. Despite holding different job titles, we mostly had the same responsibilities (a large part of which was simple data entry). I did other people's dishes and took out the trash. In lieu of a paycheck they allowed us use of their services, which equated to at least a couple hundred dollars' value, but  it felt like more of a consolation prize and was not equal to a living wage for the hours we worked. 

See the difference? One instance left me with valuable experience and the notion that I was a person with value and ideas to contribute. The other made me feel completely dispensable and left with me nothing but an extra item to put on my resume. Any company can get away with unpaid internships claiming they give this abstract thing called "experience," but the way to measure that is completely subjective. And the economic barrier this creates to people who cannot afford to work for free deserves a whole separate blog post. I received college credit for the internship, meaning it actually cost me about $4,000 to gain that "experience."

Like I said, I won't look to my job for complete life satisfaction. I will always like drinking beer, throwing dinner parties, and watching movies more than I like working (probably). But it seems like for most adults, a career is still part of who you are and a big indicator of your productivity (and subsequently, your worth) in our society. I'm constantly worrying about the next six months to a year and whether I'll be able to make something of myself, and the signal I'm getting from the job market ("Hey, young people, your work is totally not worth our money") is starting to overpower the optimism I once had. The anxiety (and sometimes, depression) over this is part of what landed me in that waiting room in the first place.

Maybe if we could convince our bosses to help pay for our therapy, that'd be a start.