Some Days I'm Up and Some Days I'm Down

Today was not the greatest day at work. Nothing specifically happened to make it bad; I think I was just in kind of a bad mood and some little things started to bother me more than usual. In the middle of the day, I filled out my program's bi-weekly survey, and they asked a couple of questions about when we'd taken initiative in our internships. I was shocked to realize that I couldn't really think of any stories of taking initiative. I feel like I haven't been my normal self in this internship because normally I take initiative all the time to learn more things or to do tasks that I know need to be done but I haven't been asked to do. And that got me thinking more explicitly about what I'd already been vaguely feeling: I'm not doing an amazing job at this internship. I'm certainly not doing a poor job, but I'm probably doing acceptable-to-good, B-level work. Which, as we all know, isn't good enough...or at least it isn't typical.

I started trying to figure out why this is. Am I not trying as hard as I usually would? Are the tasks too difficult or too easy? Maybe it's all of the above. I'm basically doing research for eight hours a day. I've always done adequate research in school, but I've never been extremely efficient at it, and I've usually disliked it at least somewhat. The only time I enjoy researching is when I read about interesting ideas that start sparking more ideas and I can start connecting the dots in my head and get really excited. But in this internship, first of all, I'm not researching ideas; I'm researching facts. Second of all, I don't get to connect any dots because all the pieces of information are pretty discrete. So anyways, I really am trying to make myself work really enthusiastically and efficiently, but it's just so hard to make myself do! At my CBE internship, I got so excited about what I was doing that I got into a "flow" and lost track of time. A lot of days, I felt like I could stay there forever because I enjoyed being in charge of so many things and working to bring them all together. But here, I don't have much "ownership" of the project, at least not in my mind. I'm the only person doing the type of research that I'm doing, but it's not like I have a "vision" for the project. I feel like I'm sort of expendable. If I was unable to go back to the internship, they could find another person to take my place in a heartbeat. And it's not like the people who work there make me feel like I'm unimportant at all! It's just that I know the stuff I'm doing isn't difficult and it doesn't have my personal "stamp" on it.

I think I was pretty spoiled by my CBE internship. It let me have so much responsibility and be so creative and get to coordinate so many things into a cohesive whole. It let me utilize my strengths and get lost in my projects, etc. I guess now I'm experiencing a more typical bottom-of-the-totem-pole intern position. I'm doing grunt work; that's all there is to it. And you know, what I'm doing is really fine. I don't dread going to work at all. It's just that it's frustrating to me to feel like I'm only doing an adequate-to-good level of work. And I don't really know how to do it any better.

But speaking of iniative, possibly I should try to take some. There isn't really a lot of room for initiative in the job I've been assigned. I pretty much show up on time, work on researching parks and gardens all day, and then leave. I don't know anything else about what goes on at the company, so I can't really offer to help out or do different tasks. But maybe I should see if I could go out to lunch with my boss and discuss (a) how he thinks the project is going and what he thinks of my work so far and (b) if I could possibly be a part of a few other aspects of the company, even if just for an hour or so a day. I know that the job I'm doing right now is really helpful to the company, and that they hired me specifically to do this job. So I obviously don't want to seem like I don't want to keep doing it. But it would just be nice to get a feel for the book publishing business while I'm there, instead of just doing one repetitive project for two months.

I hope that the people who work there don't think I'm dumb. Yesterday I had a "brain fart" and said that Portugal was in South America and then got really red because OBVIOUSLY I know where Portugal is! But I felt really stupid, even though it was also kind of funny. Normally I would just laugh it off; it's just when you combine that with my mental complex that is afraid I'm not doing stellar work, then I feel more embarrassed by it. Also, a new intern (who's also a girl from the U.S.) started yesterday. Before I even met her, I had this somewhat irrational fear that we would feel like we were subtly competing. And I thought that solely on the basis of the fact that I knew the new intern was going to be a girl from the States. But I think my predilection is sort of true. I mean, we had lunch together today and we're obviously basically friendly towards each other. But I feel like she purposely was telling me stories to make me understand that even though I've been in England and at Anthem Press longer than she has, she's been to England before and she knows what's going on in the publishing world. Like she's studied at Oxford and she knows that fantasy romances with a lot of sex have a very wide audience even though they're obviously not great art. Plus she's just one of those people who asserts things very confidently, which always bothers me because I always say things as though I'm not sure of what I'm talking about, even if I actually know as much as the people who say things confidently. I don't know...it's slightly humorous and it will remain humorous as long as it doesn't develop into a real rivalry. Which it probably won't because we're doing completely different projects. But I said the idiotic Portugal comment in front of her yesterday after we'd known each other for like a half an hour. Ugh. Oh well, I should just let it go.