Interns are Killing Me.

I was downtown at a short-course for business writing all day today. We were on the 11th floor of the GH, in a modest-sized classroom, sitting at tables that made up 3 legs of a square, with the professor walking around lecturing from the middle. We were encouraged to bring our laptops because there were three 15-minute periods of time during the 8-hour workday designated to practicing writing X or Y type memo. The rest of the day, most people half-closed their laptop lids, or put them away altogether, which I saw as a polite way to communicate to the professor that we were listening. Another polite thing that most people did was to look at the professor while he was talking.

The freaking girl next to me – who made it very well-known that she was an intern – kept her laptop open the entire time. Mainly because she was using it. I read one email she was writing to someone, who I assumed to be a roommate or at least a fellow intern, something about “chocolate covered strawberries and vanilla ice cream or mozzarella cheese with tomato and basil.” Then she signed on to a communication program similar to Instant Messenger to ask an intern how she liked the movie she saw last night. Then she started composing a mass-email to all the interns about an upcoming white water rafting trip. The next thing she did was the last straw for me, and the reason I’m posting any of this anyway. She freaking checked her Myspace page. Come on. Come on! A professor is lecturing 4 feet away from you, at a course that the company spent several hundred dollars for you to attend, and you feel compelled to see if one of your e-friends filled out some hot new survey.

Also another one of her emails said something like, “Here is an old version of my resume which helped me hope it helps.”

Now there’s someone who needs to be paying close attention during a course on writing.

For the love!