On the difficulty of securing an internship

You might get the impression from my previous posts that all I’m doing in Spain is eating and traveling. While those are my most enjoyable endeavors, I’m also enrolled in the last twelve hours of coursework required for my Spanish degree. Now, my college friends might point out that twelve hours is hardly a heavy load, and they’d be right. But no matter how little, any time spent in the classroom feels like it drags on forever because, well, I’m in Spain and I’d rather be leisurely sipping a café con leche and reading a book. Luckily, that’s exactly what one of my classes, an independent study in literature, entails. Instead of having lectures, my professor and I choose works for me to read, set deadlines, and meet periodically to discuss them. Thus, while my friends here in Sevilla have class from 9-12 each morning (two classes back-to-back), I have lecture from 9-10:20 (a course called Spanish life and culture) and I’m finished with my classroom time for the day. After the first class, I go to my favorite bar to have breakfast and read.

                 

Now, before we go any further, I need to explain the difference between a bar in the United States and the typical bar in Spain. While there certainly are American-style, only-for-drinking-at-night bars here in Sevilla, the majority are quiet, family-run cafes that specialize in breakfast and tapas. Imagine if Starbucks also sold alcohol and you’d be on the right track.

                 

Anyway, I go to a particular bar, Café d’Arthe, which is right around the corner from the school. It has the best, cheapest breakfast and café con leche and the friendliest workers in the city. It offers the perfect atmosphere for reading. It’s the best classroom I’ve ever had at Tech.

                 

Alas, not all of my classes are so leisurely. I’m taking four classes this semester. The semester here is broken into two halves, which would ordinarily mean that I would take two classes for the first half and two for the second. I finished with one of my classes last half and am now taking another half-semester course. The other two classes span the regular semester: my independent literature course that I mentioned above, and a class called “The internship in Spanish.” The point of this class, as the name suggests, is to secure and internship with a local business and work 70 hours total over the course of the semester, with various side assignments (such as writing an essay over a labor issue in Spain).

                 

So, in January when classes started, I started looking into options. Luckily, the Center keeps logs of the places where previous students have worked and have them filed according to category (social work, restaurants, gyms, etc.). One of the suggestions from the professor was to work at one of the local nursing homes, which, she said, had been a really good experience for previous students. The idea of sitting around chatting with old people, many of whom lived through not only the Franco era, but the Civil War itself, sounded charming. I got the information for a nearby Church-run nursing home and, a few weeks later, stopped by and asked for the director. After waiting for a short time, two nuns, one old, the other older, came in to greet me. I introduced myself as a student from the university and told them that I was interested in doing an internship with them, as students had done in the past. To my dismay, however, they told me that they had decided not to take on any students for this semester. They were very sweet and had a good reason for doing so—they said that many of the people at this particular nursing home were in a far too-advanced state to be able to hold any meaningful conversation, which would mean that any students interning there would have only minimal opportunities to improve their language skills. Fair enough, I thought, and I thanked them for their time and left.

                

 Despite this setback, I really wasn’t concerned about the situation. I figured there were plenty of other opportunities to work in nursing homes. There weren’t. That particular home was the only one on file, so I had to figure something else out. Unlike most of the other people in the class, I’m not a business or business-related major. So I wasn’t all that interested in getting a desk job here in Sevilla. After reviewing my remaining options, I found a promising opportunity at the offices of an association for developmental disorders. They’d taken students before, and I figured it would be a great place to practice my Spanish while doing medically-related and meaningful work. I stopped by that very same day—we’re now in the third week of January—to talk with the director about an internship. She wasn’t there, but the office secretary was very friendly and let me know that she’d be in later that week and, if I wanted, I could leave a resume and contact information to be passed on. I wrote a brief letter describing what I was looking for and jotted down a resume. The secretary told me that I’d probably hear something by week’s end. This was on a Monday.

                 

The following Tuesday (that is, a week and a day after I first dropped by), after not having heard anything, I returned to the office to again try to talk with the director. She wasn’t there, but the secretary told me that she would be in on Thursday. I returned on Thursday to an empty office. The following week I returned, to be told that the director would certainly be there the next week and, if I would like, the secretary would set up a time specifically for me in the director’s schedule. I came back the next week ten minutes before my scheduled meeting. After waiting there for two hours, the secretary called the director to ask her where she was. The director, she told me, had something else that had come up and wouldn’t be able to meet with me today. I thanked them for their time, told them I’d be in touch, and left.

                 

Beginning to feel the pressure—it was now February and I was the only one that hadn’t started working yet—I asked around for other options. One of the associate directors at the Center told me that there was another nursing home close by that a student had worked at the year before but, for some reason, hadn’t been documented in the log of previous businesses (hence my not knowing about it). Encouraged, I went by there that very same day. Only to be told that the director wasn’t there, but, if I would like, I could return the next day to meet with him. Being a “director” must be the best job in all of Spain. From what I can tell, it basically means that you never, ever have to come to work. Quickly seeing where this was headed, I thanked them and left with no intentions of coming back. I didn’t have another month to waste waiting for a meeting with someone who may or may not actually exist.

                 

Now beginning to get nervous, I returned to the Center to ask if they had any other ideas. “How do you feel about working in a restaurant?” they asked me. I sighed. My first and only experience in the food service industry, a three month stint at Sonic in high school, had left me prematurely jaded. But I was out of options. However, when they told me that Café d’Arthe, at which I had become a regular, positively loved having students and were somewhat disappointed that none had applied, my disappointment turned to excitement. Spaniards spend half their lives in bars (remember, think coffee shop rather than Moe’s), they say. They’re sort of like the roadside diners in the country, or the barbershops in Harlem. Bars are where Spaniards go to shoot the breeze with their neighbors and friends. They’re the social hubs of the country.

                 

The owners of the bar, whom I had gotten to know over the previous month, were happy to have me joining them. I learned to make coffee and pour beer and that was that. If only I had gone to them first, I would’ve saved nearly a month and a half of walking around the city for canceled meetings with non-existent “directors”.

                

 In addition to satisfying the requirements for the course, working at the bar is a lot of fun. There are two owners, Eva and Jairo, and another employee named Mauricio. Eva is from Columbia, Jairo, her husband, is from Venezuela, and Mauricio, Uruguay. Nicest people you’d ever met. And so generous, too. In addition to getting most of my breakfasts for free these days, Eva and Jairo will encourage me to have a second breakfast or, if I go too long without my treasured café con leche, Jairo will tell me to make one for myself, in the same imperative manner in which a father might tell his kid to go mow the lawn. What can I say? They simply insist on giving me free coffee. And of course I don’t want to offend them, so I do as they say and make myself another delicious, creamy, rich, steaming cup of deliciousness. It’s tough work, but someone’s gotta do it.