An Intern's First Month -or- Crying on the Job

By Avital Isaacs
Girls Write Now Intern

If I can say one thing with absolutely certainty, it’s this: I have cried out of joy more during my first month as a GWN intern than any other month in my life. The staff didn’t list “weeping softly” in my inventory of duties to be performed. It’s a service that I offer on my own time, wedged somewhere between the photocopier and the dreams of our mentees.

With full disclosure, I am a weepy gal. That YouTube clip of the lion reunion? You betcha. The end of Toy Story 3? Absolutely. However, I try to keep things light in an office setting. I hold myself to a certain level of corporate decorum, and being overcome by emotion doesn’t marry well with operating, oh, say, a paper cutter. My last internship was at a comedy theater. I had the driest eyes in the house.

On my first day here, I was scanning the portfolio of one of this year’s graduates. I had been suffering from sleep deprivation from the night before, having experienced nightmares of my feet falling off en route to the office and sliding into 8th Avenue’s storm drains. And I was, I’m sure, bewildered: assuming that glazed, cheerful, terrified look that interns are required by law to adopt. But the scanner and I go way back, so I relaxed into the familiar routine and glanced down at the next page. Written in loopy, embellished handwriting, one of our mentees was explaining how helpful Girls Write Now had been in providing stability during a turbulent time in her family. And as the scanner grunted like a slumbering beast, I was struck by what it feels like to be absolutely and completely certain that you are doing a Good Thing.

That was the first appearance of Ol’ Waterworks. It wasn’t the last.

I lost it during the final CHAPTERS reading, listening to graduating senior mentee Justine recite her poem, “Oh M Gee”. And just yesterday, waiting on the train platform after a fruitful discussion about my continued post-intern involvement with GWN, I boo-hooed into my fashionably oversized sunglasses. I was a disgrace to the too-cool riders of the rush hour L train.

Whenever I become short sighted in my work, whenever a spreadsheet brazenly reformats itself, whenever I find myself trying to unbold a word or two on a labyrinthine webpage, I stop and remind myself of what I am doing. I am doing something I believe in. I am working for a program that I wish had been available to me as a teenager. I am enabling young women to receive support and encouragement for their writing. I am helping mentors nurture the next generation of game changers. And I am taking the thirty seconds that I need to really feel gratitude as it clandestinely rolls off my cheeks and into a discreet tissue. Not a bad deal at all.