“What! You started doing a job?” No, lady! it’s just an internship. So, internship might be tough work for those who have never worked or dreamed of going to work early morning and leaving late noon. Anyway you get to learn.  A question strikes in the mind.  Really? Internship is an old practice in developed countries to help students explore their area of interest. It’s a way to explore the way to join something that fascinates you. Their supervisor believes that they will be able to create future stars in the related field, train and nurture them. Internship makes the intern to apply all the theoretical knowledge they have acquired through years of schooling. It is time to know that what they had been learning can be put into practice and nothing they studied was a waste.

But does the real crux of internship survive in the present days in the context of countries like Nepal? The fact that the supervisor is not at all concerned about the intern and takes it casually, might be because the trend that has been set up makes internship a planned way of passing time by the interns. So is it really good to be an intern?

Internship is a good practice in countries where people start working after they pass school and have found the area of their interest. But in countries like Nepal where most of the graduates do not have an idea what their area of interest is the term internship changes to “In-turn-ship”. You can distinguish good from bad when you have seen both of them. The other way around is to find someone who helps you distinguish them. Similarly it applies with internship. People jump to certain sectors and start working, and as time passes by they cannot jump out back and become frogs in the well, helpless.

Although you might not learn much but you learn whether the path you have chosen is good for you or not. The intern changes to “in-tUrn” where U signifies understanding, understanding what you want, understanding the corporate world and whether you fit in it or not, understanding whether it is your field of interest or understanding what you had not understood when you were a student. The “In-tUrn-ship” might be a U-turn for all those who realize that their ship has been sailing in the wrong direction, and it’s better to turn than to collapse in the middle of the sea hit by rocky shores and fierce storms. It is never too late to take a U-turn. Making correct decisions in time will prevent disasters in future.