So I'm doing an unpaid internship for school and its been a logistical nightmare:
We started in January and we were told that we'd be spending a saturday every few weeks down at a site a few hours away and doing lab work on campus.
Thursday night we finally get our schedules and I'm scheduled to leave friday afternoon, spend the night on site, and spend all day saturday working.
I was feeling sick and my mental health was bad due to a horrible week. (I'm facing eviction for BS reasons and harassment from my LLs) So I let my boss know that I wouldn't be going to the site this weekend but would gladly go a different weekend and work extra hours to make up for any time lost. He never responded but I could tell it pissed him off.
Yesterday was my first day doing lab work on campus. My boss told me to go let another intern show me the ropes. This intern showed me a specific way to use the washing station that was wrong, but she watched me and told me I was doing it correctly. Shortly after she left, the sink started to clog up. Panicked, I texted her and the other interns and asked what to do, but their advice made the clog worse.
I should add that we were both unsupervised and this was literally my first piece of training for this and it was being done by another intern and I was doing exactly as I was shown.
When my boss came back he blamed me, he asked if I would ever wash sand and mud down my sink at home and when I tried to explain that I was following what I was told by the senior intern, he just said “you're done for the day, go home!” And turned around and left.
Honestly I thought because it was a lab and the other intern was using the sink that way, it must've been a special sink to wash out debris and material. I guess I'm just stupid.
I should add that my “boss” is also my professor and advisor so I have to see this guy again and its got my stomach in knots. The sad thing is that he was my favorite professor and I really liked him. I'd never seen him get angry like that before. I hate being a dissappointment to people and because it was my first day and I've already pissed off my boss to the point where I get told to go home, I embarassed the fuck out of myself crying loudly walking back to my car.
I feel like a failure and I want to drop out and curl up in a ball and die. Has anyone got some advice as to how I can keep going with this internship? How do I deal with the anxiety and awkwardness now? Fuck my life