Just wanted to share bits of my story with you, a bit of a rant if you will 🙂
I'm 25 y/o, graduated with a Master's last year, doing an internship since Sept. I've been doing them since my first year of Master's (this is technically the second year I've been working).
1st & 2nd internships were not paid, as they were “”part of my university curriculum”” (this is very average in my country).
3rd internship was 800€ a month, had to take 1h train as the city where it was is incredibly expensive and wouldn't allow me to.. well, survive with that amount of money. They told me they would've hired me at the end – of course they didn't, telling me there wasn't enough money to even extend my internship, just to hire another intern right after my contract ended.
4th internship is the current one. I'm paid around ~900€ in a major European city. I like the people but I'm overworked and the team cannot seem to function without an intern to support them, as they are also overworked. The work itself is either hectic or incredibly boring, and any suggestions I'm asked to provide are then scrapped. The curse of the intern I'd say: not a full employee but still does even more than one.
I've been thinking about quitting for a while now: all the other trainees have started quitting as well, I'm tired of not having some kind of stability and certainty and I'm feeling very burnt out from working for two years without a pay for half of it.
What's stopping me is that:
- I cannot rely on any financial support that's not mine: my parents cannot support me, and since I barely have money for basics (food, rent, utilities) I don't have a lot of money as an emergency fund.
- There is a very low change I'd be getting a better job (not necessarily a lot better, the pay for entry-levels is still low here) – they require more years of experience than I have
- Because of the above point, I could just get more internships – which I'd like to avoid.
I'm not sure what to do, I just know that I'm always mentally tired and I never have the energy to do anything else. On one hand I feel like I should be grateful to even have something, and I'm aware that with my degree this is the situation out there… but on the other, I'm really so tired of working.