No Longer Disarmed

The interns are coming! The interns are coming!

I remember what it was like to be an intern back at the Honolulu Advertiser a good nine years ago(!). So, today at work, with every apologetic laugh and for every moment the interns seemed disarmed by our irreverent sparring, I felt a need to protect them and say "hang in there."

The interns they hire here are hyperachievers, scholastically speaking. They've scored near-perfect on the SATs and go to schools like MIT and Harvey-Mudd and Stanford.

But I realize that no matter how much fearlessness is required to achieve such academic greatness, you can still carry innocence and fear when you are young and surrounded by people who've been there longer than you have.

I remember people of the likes of Esme Infante being so kind as to ask me questions simply because she was curious. And I remember being so alarmed that such an adult would engage me. I always wanted to say interesting or provocative things, but never managed to do so. My naivete would gloriously shine through, though I fiercely believed I was not naive.

It helps to have an empathetic soul to guide you in an adult work environment. That's what Esme was to me and many others. Still, all the Esme Infantes in the world could not teach me what only time and experience did so well.

Time and experience taught me that there are some really lame-ass editors out there. I remember how starry-eyed I was and the questions I'd ask, only to receive some wise-ass useless two-word phrase in return. To this day, I cringe at how much I worshiped them.

Time and experience taught me that there are some really virtuous editors out there. Some took great pains to work with me side-by-side, and only in retrospect can I remember the way their eyes looked when they saw that I was still very young. To this day, I value them.

Work environments didn't teach me about work environments. I suspect they never really do. It is only after I learned about the human condition that I understood my work environment. And learning about the human condition required many things of me outside the office. It required that I spill my soul for someone I loved, to have him disregard me in the end. It required that I break a promise to someone I respected, then watch her move through her days with disappointment. It required embracing short-lived moments of glory, then failing or succeeding among a cloud of disbelief. Along the way, the questions piled up in my gut. So I had to answer them along the way, lest they immobilize me. I answered questions one at a painful time. I still answer them.

But I no longer feel disarmed like I used to.

Posted by ruth at May 28, 2002 08:38 PM