The life of an intern is odd.

You oft feel as if you're not a "real" part of the company you're working for - after all, you have an end date to your time there. (Ironically, this leads to more job security than some full-timers end up with...)

And there's often no shortage of what from the surface appear to be "menial" tasks - although sometimes the menial turns out to be pretty damn cool, and sometimes you're lucky enough to avoid that whole category entirely.

But here, we're also the "elite", since it's one of the "top 10 internships in the country" [how they figure this out, I have no idea]. The Chief Creative Officer of the company (pretty damned cool job title, eh?) stands there and tells us that they would like for some of us to be pulling lead positions in the company in less than 7 years (average time to those positions: 15-20 years)

And then we go back to our little intern desks and do the same thing we've been doing all along.

So it's a mix of insecurities (why don't i have a full-time job like all of these people) and awe (wow, that's my name in those game credits) and feeling like this is exactly the right thing to be doing...

At least I'm not one of those interns that draws constant intern jokes. I usually kill those off after a few weeks. At the design firm it was by being one of the guys - playing fantasy football and going to happy hour. At Disney, the thought never even crossed their minds. (I still wonder if I ever should have left...)

Here, it was by ... well, a little bit of playing like the guys, and a little bit of being too nice for anyone to want to be mean about my intern status.

And then Clarence came along - an engineering intern on my team.

Poor Clarence. No intern survival skills, that boy.

Constant intern jokes - most people don't call him by name. Of course, it doesn't help that his desk was in the hallway, requiring "Please don't kick the intern" signs to be placed prominently on his chair.

Let it be noted that "Please Don't Kick the [anything]" signs are not effective devices.

It doesn't help that he whines alot - nor does it help that he's not actually that good at his job. Lots of broken objects. Poor Clarence indeed.

Back to the speech for a moment - they [SimParentCompany] seem to be trying to put their money where their mouth is, and implementing an "intern matriculation program" where we are fast-tracked within the company towards positions of leadership.

Yet another reason why sticking around until December seems like a wonderful thing indeed.

But we still haven't resolved that pesky issue of tuition...