A Love Letter to Your Interns

A mindless task. A technology gaffe. A childcare lapse. Your intern has your back. Sure, they have papers, readings, projects, group assignments, online labs. But your intern wants to learn from you, not just the books in their bag.

You feel busy and overwhelmed, they feel hungry and ready to experience more. They give attention to detail that you didn’t expect when you assigned the work. They work meticulously on one task to make sure it’s exactly right just for you, putting in effort that you wouldn’t have had the energy to use. You decide you’ll give them a challenge today? They’ll meet it, they’ll find a way.

You wonder who is teaching who when they find creative new solutions to work they previously didn’t know how to do. You also learn how to teach, how to critique, how to put your knowledge within reach because you now have a ready and willing student to oversee.

We’ve all had a year of sacrifices: lost vacations and togetherness. But we managers, back in the day, were at least able to enjoy our youth to the fullest.

For most of us, it wasn’t taken away right before our eyes. Meanwhile, interns are in their best years in the worst times. Their once-in-a-lifetime high school events, meeting would-be lifelong college friends, fulfilling semesters abroad to Florence. Lost. Yet, they still wake up to put in hours for you that they will not get back. Then at the end of each day, they are thanking you for your input, your guidance, and your feedback.

Meanwhile, interns are in their best years in the worst times.

Some interns think they’re lucky to have us, but the reality is that we are lucky to have them. The starry-eyed brightness and the forward-facing hope for a better future for themselves and for others inspires and emboldens us in ways that typical colleagues cannot.

And for all of this, we thank you, our interns. We may not be able to give back to you what 2020 has taken, but we hope with our mentorship, you learned new things and grew in ways entirely different from what you envisioned.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you and cheers to a more normal 2021!

Dedicated to Fabio Murgia, Hana Hancock, and all the other interns we have been lucky to call our work-family.