My Favorite Intern

Since June 2008, I’ve been living in Karachi in so called “MC mansion” or “Interns’ house”. It is located at Zamzama commercial lane, and welcomes all AIESEC people who are coming to internships in Karachi.

We are all from different countries: big and small; cold and hot; with the sea and not; located close by and far far away: Sri Lanka, Lithuania, Romania, Kenya, Slovakia, Rwanda, China, USA, Australia, and I myself come from Russia.

As I mentioned before, we all live in the same house, have fun together, and got to know each other quite well.

Now, Pakistan is not an easy place to live. The one can easily freak out from small surprises that we have every day: water starts coming from the floor of the flat; shower suddenly breaks and you can’t do anything, because you do not speak Urdu; power goes off for 1 hour exactly at the time when you’ve ironed your shirt from one side only and you have a very important meeting in the next 20 minutes; you wake up and see no water in the bathroom(and you need to go to the roof and fix the tank); and so on.

And this is just the house. When you go on the street, people are staring at you, taxi drivers rip off, then you suddenly notice that the nice cocktail shake in the street restaurant last night left you with a diarrhea for entire week; and it is so hot outside that you completely loose your mind.

Luckily, most of all internships are interesting, so work takes time and helps in general satisfaction, but again, you will get your portion of cultural shocks at the office as well.

I will let alone all cultural differences that you face living with people from 10 countries in the same house.

So now you can realize what kind of challenge you take when coming to Pakistan.

Working in MC, I am interacting with all interns coming to Karachi. I noticed that they behave very differently when it comes to adjustment to the culture, carrying on their working responsibilities, living with other people.

It started about 2 months back, when my flat mates asked me: “So Katya, who is your favorite intern?” I didn’t think of this question before and really liked it. So I really started to think – what kind of behavior I adore. This is how I came up with my criteria for a favorite intern.

“My favorite intern” should have the following 5 characteristics:

1. Stay positive even when facing a difficult situation (e.g. at work), and do not complain all the time. It doesn’t mean that the person should not talk about these things at all – the point is to be solution-oriented and making steps to make situation better.
2. Be independent enough to organize his/her own time if needed (e.g. during weekend)
3. Respect house rules (make payments to the house pot, clean dishes, not to break things etc.)
4. Make time to socialize with other people in the house
5. Contribute to the well-being of others: e.g. sometimes to cook food for everyone, invite others to interesting places, share washing powder and milk, crack funny jokes etc.

Who do you think is my favorite intern? Feel free to have your say! (Please vote only if you know these people).