reality bites

ah, covering the phones for a lunchbreak. is there any other single experience that defines the intern so completely? i submit that there is not. oh sure, filing and collating are intern-favoring tasks, but the one-hour shift on the phones is the be all and end all of unpaid drudgery.

the office assitant or--dare i say it?--secretary gets paid a decent salary to do this job. not great, of course, but when you apply for a job called 'office assistant' you know precisely what you're getting into. for the intern, though, (especially the intern in the glamorous world of progressive policy) covering the phones has the same feel as going home to live with your parents after graduation. it's a coming down to earth sort of feeling. not really bad, in fact it's a vital component of running an office. nevertheless, i feel a little demeaned by it. i have a bachelor's degree...and printed instructions for how to forward a call to voicemail. cognitive dissonance and i are going to be good friends this summer.

plenty of time for blogging, though. and the nytimes coverage of france v. switzerland!