Hi everyone,
looking for some guidance from people with a healthy approach to work that won't just tell me to rise and grind lol
Some background: I just graduated in March and moved to another city in another country for this internship, which I am doing mainly for the experience of living abroad. The wage is not competitive for someone who holds a master's degree in my field at all, it's not even a livable wage considering the cost of living here. I am interested in the content and the field, but the main task I was hired for is pretty boring. Whenever I've worked in the past, I've found that my approach to work is not rewarded in a normal office setting but rather punished, so I've been deliberately underperforming and not handing in things the minute I finish etc.
I want to do good work generally, but once I sit down to do them, I'm usually super fast completing my tasks and they just don't give me enough work to fill all the hours since I don't have any meetings for the most part. I'm on track to finish the main task of my internship three months before schedule. I do sometimes… ahem… use my work time creatively when I'm working remotely, but mainly so that I'll actually not run out of stuff to do in the office since it's much easier to spend an hour or two doing something else when you don't have colleagues breathing down your neck the entire time (we all share an open plan office, sigh).
My direct line manager said on my first day he would not be checking my hours and he seems generally happy with the work I do, but I can't help but feel super unproductive and a little guilty for not being more proactive/taking more initiative. I'm used to a pretty heavy workload, during the last six months before graduation I used to juggle uni, an internship, a freelance gig and language classes. I have actually asked for more and also more demanding work, but I don't know whether I should push more. Maybe my time would be more wisely spent using this as a CV booster but learning new skills at the same time so I don't die of boredom (for example the language of this country, or other skills related to my field).
At the moment I'm not planning to stay here long term, but I'm simultaneously unsure about the direction I do want to go in. Therefore, it doesn't really matter whether I burn any bridges here, so to speak, but I'm also not aiming to be so terrible they'll actively warn against hiring me.
TL;DR Should I ask for more work, or use my work downtime to learn other skills that will make me more hirable? And if so, what skills would you recommend? (Just slacking off and watching tv or whatever is not an option because atm I think this situation is making me low key depressed.)