What I learnt in my first internship.

Like in our school days we were made to write essays on our "first" experience of something (my first dog, my first award, blah, blah), I will now tell you my first encounter with an internship. Before a child gets into law school, he/she has the most puristic view of an internship, especially an NGO internship, considering NGOs are like the superheros, who, with 'non-governmental' support, try to save the nation. I, too, always wanted to work for an NGO which helped the deprived and worked towards the betterment of the society. So, when I came to know we had to work for an NGO in our first year, I was delighted. Finally I had the chance to serve my motherland! Before the vacations began, I asked a few seniors what to look for in an internship. Their answers like "yaad nahi yaar, main toh bas ek hi din gaya tha,certificate leke wapas aa gaya" and "actually, I don't remember. It was quite insignificant" left me confused. Weren't internships supposed to be the most important part of law school? Didn't people die to get into places like NHRC and UN organisations? I decided I wanted to work nevertheless, and searched for a few NGOs in my hometown and gave the details to the placement cell. After waiting for sometime, when none of the NGOs replied, I contacted them on my own. Finally, I got an internship at an NGO which works for water conservation (yes, so much for saving humans) and river cleaning. I still did not give up. I went to work and on the first day, the head of the NGO told me I was to do some paperwork and later, I will be sent for a field trip to see how the water conservation plants worked (I was excited out my wits, trust me). Since a month I have been doing paperwork and with 2 days left for my internship to get over, I don't see that field trip happening anytime soon. So, for around a month now, I have been handling the accounts of the NGO. The accounts run into crores and my maths is as good as my dog's, so you can imagine how much fun I had doing my job. Everyday from Monday to Saturday, 11 to 5, I suffered. I wanted to call some NGO to save me from the torture. But, there is one thing this internship taught me- patience. Doing accounts for 6 hours everyday, I feel like I have been trained to digest any sort of monotony life could offer me from now on. I can sit staring at a wall for an hour straight and trust me, I'll survive. I found out internships are overrated, first year law students are of no use to any NGO and I sacrificed my beautiful vacations to save water. Sigh.

Growing up or giving up?

I always thought life was not just a mere journey but an adventure. The least you could do to keep up with it was take risks. I was a firm believer of living each day as it comes. Life was never too planned out, never too calculated. I was impulsive and reckless and that seemed to work for me. Indulging in random acts of craziness just to make life more colorful, actions before thoughts and decisions before speculations- life was simple, easy. Times change, we change. We grow up. Life isn't all that easy anymore. Everything seems to have a purpose. No more impulsive actions, no more miscalculated decisions. We grow up to learn that everything should be thought about and the risks weighed. Everyone around you judges you by your actions, everyone wants to pull you down. So what do you do? Pull them down too. Gone are the days when you couldn't care less about the rest. Now all your actions are based on what they expect out of you. The child in you dies slowly and you do nothing to save it. After all, you have to grow up. What we forget is that with that inner child, we let a part of our soul die too. The energy which used to drive us, the faith that used to keep us from falling and the hope of rising again after a fall, all die slowly. We poison our brains with the venom of sensibility. Not everything has to make sense, but we often seem to forget that. I cried before my eighteenth birthday because I was upset I had to grow up. Everyone told me "its just a number". We all know it is not. I despise having to be responsible. I hate the fact that I have to make my own decisions and there seems no one who's got my back. Yes, I hate being a grown up. The unnecessary worry of the future and of things I shouldn't even care about gets to me. I regret letting it go, and I wish it would come back. That very part of me which made me the person I was.