internships

Oi, doll, ignore him,' said Sia, using a notebook to fan her face. 'Sweet lord, I'm like a human hot-water bottle wrapped in doona in front of a heater at the moment. And did I tell you about the constant farting?

All of us__mployers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves__re complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous.