Tuesday 24 January 2012

Positioning

To be an intern is to often be unimportant and overlooked. Where you are positioned within the office is key to how involved you will feel and a slight hint at how the agency wants you to feel. My heart sank when I started a placement where I was sat in the same room as a freelance photographer and the kitchen, with a wall seperating us from the designers. No prizes for guessing what they wanted me to do.

Often studios have a centralised layout, which is nice as everyone can get to know eachother well. It's nice as long as you are in the centre too. My experience has been that outside the circle of designers often lies a few Macs reserved for the temporary; the freelancers and the interns. Facing the wall, away from the rest of the office, it is hard to add your two cents without feeling like you're a nosy parker. It is impossible to make friends and if an account manager doesn't bother you with some pointless errand, you could go a whole day without talking to a soul.

As an intern you yearn to find an agency that will accept you as part of the furniture, but in some agencies you feel like an outsider from the offset. You don't belong. Outcast to the edges you work facing the wall, like a school boy in the naughty corner. You're an intern and that is all you will ever be. One week, Two; a month if you're lucky. Then onto the next one.

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