The Intern

I received an unexpected surprise from one of my temporary staff today. He came into my room this morning bearing a gift for me which took me back a little since I've never ever received a gift from any of my staff or colleagues before.

Now before any of you start thinking weird thoughts like he's got the hots for me or something, let me explain a little further. Besides, my other partner also got the same gift from him.

A little over three months ago, I spoke to my partner about offering internship in our office to graphic design students who need to do their practical training in a design or print firm as part of their college syllabus. He agreed and I started sending out emails to all the art and design colleges out there.

We're pretty busy and I really don't have all that much time to train people but with the quality of future designers that comes out after graduating with utterly horrible skills, that I really want to do my part to make sure that at least one or two of these future designers actually have some production knowledge when they graduate and not come up with all kinds of impossible ideas later in life and people like me end up suffering and figuring out how to execute these ideas.

You'd be surprised at how utterly clueless some of these so-called creative directors or art directors are in some of those international ad agencies. They just come up with all kinds of silly creative ideas with hardly taking into consideration the production aspect if things and then when we tell them it can't be done, all they can say is, 

'Aiyaaa, how ah? We need it tomorrrow.'

These guys may be creative and all that but oftentimes have the production knowledge of a cow. That is why I decided that we take in students for internship (and also cheap labour ... hahaha ... just kidding) so I can train them on the production aspect of things.

I got lucky and we had an immediate response from an art college (coincidentally it was my former art college at that) who had some students to send over. So after some interviews, we took in this guy and he started his practical with us, which would last for two months. Today is his last day and as a token of his appreciation, he gave both me and my partner a neck-tie and cuff links which had smiling away cos it's a gift that's going to be lying in my room seeing as how I only wear tees and jeans to work everyday.

But it still was a pleasant surprise anyway :D Though he had his ups and downs as a trainee, I enjoyed training him and he did a pretty good job of listening. He even managed to come up with some creative work that was selected by a client which made him very happy seeing his hard work come to fruition. I know how that felt cos when I was doing my practical all those years ago and had an advertisement I did actually be published in the papers was like pure joy :D I still have the ad till this very day.

It's his last day today and I wish him all the best and hopefully he's learned enough here to put that knowledge to good use in the future. And when he graduates and if he decides to want to come back here to work, the door is always open for him.
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