The intern experience: Best and Worst experiences (excluding the obvious too much work)

I saw a few discussions about the highs and lows of interns from the perspective of the FT employees responsible for delegating tasks to the interns; however I couldn't find anything from the perspective of interns.

SO...

How is everyones' internships going? What kinds of seemingly non-job related tasks have your bosses made you guys do? What's the ratio of time you spend actually working to time you spend on tinder/ yik yak/ wso/ other non work related websites/ apps?

For me, I'd say the most boring part of this internship was when my boss was on vacation for 5 weeks (he didn't take a single vacation day for like 2 years so he saved a bunch up). While he was gone my only assignment was to log onto his work email and read him his emails over the phone every morning and afternoon. Other than that I sat staring out the window all day.

 
Best Response

Startup intern here. Reddit and refill my water bottle 10+ times a day.

Worst experience: No separate guy and girls bathrooms just multiple single ones. Had to take a massive dump, was in there for like 20 minutes and when I came out my female coworker was waiting outside for it. I literally smirked and walked away.

 
  1. Binding pitch books and driving them to the MD's house in the middle of the night with a cab. then realizing I forgot something for him in the office and taking the cab all the back to the office and to the MD's house again.

  2. Printing out two whole data rooms with a crappy 12-page-per-minute printer that goes into cool mode after 100 pages... took me almost a week.

  3. Playing "secretary" and "office manager" in a boutique firm.

ooof marone !
 

Thought the binding machine was awesome when I first started at my boutique. Overall, I've really enjoyed my time, I wish I was exposed to more modeling, but can't complain.

Drove one of my MD's home who was shitfaced after we all went out drinks after work. The next day he asked when we're "turning up" again hah

 

Im in RE and I spend a lot of time shadowing the broker when he is showing properties to people. It's fun but definitely don't want to be in brokerage. I'll also go to various banks and deposit checks for my boss and do random office tasks. The most random thing that I had to do was take the T into Boston and deliver a bunch of papers to a major law firm. Overall a decent experience but I wish I had a chance to add more value.

 

Wow that must have been really uncomfortable to be in the mix of all the full time guys who actually knew him really well

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 
W. WHITE:

Wow that must have been really uncomfortable to be in the mix of all the full time guys who actually knew him really well

It was. Women in the office crying for 2 days straight. Thankfully it's at a really lax F500 (I'm not into the IB thing), so there was really no high-stress work anyone needed to get done while mourning.

Ironically it opened them up to be shortstaffed so I got an offer to work part time 25 hr/w through the school year.

 

Im in credit research for a large AM and have spent most of my time modeling, updating models after earnings, writing earnings notes, and random projects for different analysts that are usually pretty cool.

Favorite things ive done so far was build a full model for a large industry announcement and figure out the incremental ebitda for all the major players (sorry for the lack of details, if anyone cares to hear what the project was you can pm me)

Least favorite thing is getting IM's from guys working from home or on the road and having to send them whatever data they need off bloomberg

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." William Blake
 

I was usually always busy and had something relevant to do (modeling, research, reports) at the internships I had, but probably the two worst things I ever had to do was take out the trash through the summer and manually enter Qs worth of trade confirmations into excel for records since a certain BB doesn't provide confirmations electronically.

 

My first job as an intern at a boutique was to plan 3 MDs' trip to Rio. This entailed me collecting all of their passports, applying for visas, asking them to have pictures taken, background checks done, immunizations etc. Brazil doesn't like Americans coming for business so I had to deal with uncooperative Brazilians in charge of visas. I started over 2 months in advance, but was still struggling right before their trip. I eventually folded and used the company card to pay a travel agency to do everything I couldn't, specifically flying to the nearest Embassy - for each MD. We have 3 offices, so I technically needed to be at 3 embassies: L.A., Texas, and D.C. Almost shit myself when I thought one of the visas wasn't going to get through and I thought my IB career was over before it even started.

Maximum effort.
 

Mine have always been very varied day-to-day.

Some days my manager (and others who would give me work) would be away and I'd have nothing to do all day. I'd do a combination of being productive (news etc.) and WSO.

Not been involved in very interesting work, if I'm honest, but any time when I'm actually busy doing something useful on Excel, for example, is satisfying enough. Although none of the projects have been very difficult, it's always nice to work on Excel, struggle a bit, and then come through and know your results matter (slightly, but matter nonetheless).

 

My first internship back in 2012 was in corporate accounting with a engineering firm. They treated me like shit and didn't have anything for me to actually do so they just wanted to file papers in their storage cabinets. It was stupid because these files of papers were stacking at door-heights every week and I was getting paper cuts very often. Just imagine hours of mindless paper filing everyday and you're just thinking you're too smart for this childish shit and why hasn't this company have everything paperless yet. They couldn't even find the stuff that they've filed, a problem that I fixed while I was there. Eventually at the last month of the internship, I literally was in a screw-this mode and did the following:

-for a 9-5 job I ended 10-3 (maybe 2 if I was really feeling it) -watched all Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood episodes at my cubicle (got caught everyday and got threatened by my boss with a bad review, but screw it you prob won't fire an intern in his last month and I won't use you as a reference but I'll go with one of the other employees) -popped 4 brews from the company fridge every Friday at my cubicle and took 4 home in my work bag -took 2 hour lunches instead of 30 mins -learned about finance and started my own trading account -left the papers to continue stacking until it was like 2 doors high (got complained by coworkers like every day that month I kid you not) -left the company on my final day without saying bye to like 90% of my team, hell I ended saying bye to more of the engineers than the people from accounting since they were cooler

Overall in the end, this internship set me off in a weird position because it was hard to tell interviewers for my next job what I did on the internship. But I made ok money, enjoyed my summer, watched an amazing show, cracked a lot of laughs and brews (the company's obviously) with my friends, and transitioned to finance on the side thank goodness.

 

I think you just revived an almost 3-year-old thread, but I don't care. Didn't happen to me, but have heard everything from people having to write English essays for their boss' children to people interning at BBs and flying business to client meetings.

I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. See my Blog & AMA
 

During my sophomore year internship I once had to run around the central business district delivering contracts to various clients, was literally a messenger boy for an afternoon walking around in full on business attire like a complete jabroni.

Also once had to put together a list of local private schools and their respective costs for future employees that were transferering to that office, was insane seeing the tuition costs some people pay for their fucking 8 year olds...

 
Strugglingintern12:
How should I act on Monday? Try to forget this ever happened or Tell him I will work harder and work to improve on the mistakes that were made?

Give him the finger and tell him to eff off... what do you think you should do?

"Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman." -- George Soros
 

Well, SA's are expected to mess up. There is no way your work will be perfect. Even when it is perfect, your associate (or the VP/MD) might decide that it is not. Attitude is everything.

And, no, today was not your worst day as an SA. You had time to post on WSO. Your worst day will be pulling an all nighter, then not going home until 1am the next day. That experience may be compounded by making (multiple) stupid mistakes...attention to detail goes out the window after 36 hours without sleep.

 

Best - Being in the front row of the European crisis in the bank, would have never known many things if not because I was there at the moment. When the global head came to tell us what was going on, was just icing on the cake.

Worst - Having to dry clean my suits when the closest shop was kind of far away. Damn I hated that, ruined my weekends.

Valor is of no service, chance rules all, and the bravest often fall by the hands of cowards. - Tacitus Dr. Nick Riviera: Hey, don't worry. You don't have to make up stories here. Save that for court!
 

Best - chilling at the monthly company luncheon, cracking crude jokes with the associates Worst - broad buy-side advisory deals. Enough said.

Currently: future neurologist, current psychotherapist Previously: investor relations (top consulting firm), M&A consulting (Big 4), M&A banking (MM)
 

As SAs, did you guys really not get to go out and have fun? I know the analysts in my group emphasized that we (SAs) go out and enjoy NYC, just as much as we get a good experience during our internship. Obviously it is very group specific, but sounds like it would be a miserable summer to literally be only sleeping and working.

 

Agree with bateman.

It will vary from group to group. My group really likes taking the SA's out to drink and hang out on weeknights (when there is free time).

Sucky part is that the SA's are generally expected to stay in the office until everyone has gone home. Even in a group like mine where there's not much facetime, we do expect our interns to stick around. My 2nd year said the best part of his 1st year wasn't when he got his bonus; it was when the SA's came and took some of the non-deal work (updating deal flows, formatting, etc.) off his plate.

 

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