work experience, pah.

.. and it's back to melb with me.

2 weeks in KL have been relaxing/lazy. i never do very much when i come back to KL. a lack of transport and familiarity with the place, coupled with general sloth, leads to nothing being done, besides the occasional meet-up with friends and such.

my time in KL generally involves a lot of napping.

just spent a fairly fruitless hour applying for summer internships, fruitless because i was applying for ones in Australia when usually the underlying requirement is PR or citizenship. oh well, doesn't matter. it's practice. i've decided that i won't be too bummed if i don't get any, cuz i won't without PR, and also cuz i have the rest of my life to spend working in an office, and i would rather do things i can't do after i graduate and start working for real.

which just got me thinking about the whole mentality that most final year students go through, and indeed, most uni students. in your penultimate year, it's almost de riguer to do an internship, the mad scramble to do one to have something on your resume, and get a headstart into the working world. the labour market is so competitive nowadays that everyone is searching for an edge, something to pip them just ahead of the rest, to make them stand out from the crowd. thus, the internships and work experiences, sitting in an office, photocopying papers, writing fairly unimportant reports that may never be read... do we really learn anything from the internships, or are we just living out the time to be able to put that one line 'internship with credit suisse- asset management division' on the resume?

in my experience, most people come out from internships with major banks or companies going, 'oh crap, i have to do that for the rest of my life??' and really, what kind of jobs are they going to give u as an intern? an untried, untested, almost-graduate?

since when did our lives become geared towards getting a job? i have my entire life to work. god knows that most of us will spend the most vital part of our lives working. so i've decided that if i don't get an internship this summer, that's okay. great, even. cuz then i'll spend some time travelling around australia. there's so much i haven't seen of this country, this country that i have been living in for 4 years now. i haven't been to uluru, or tasmania, or the gold coast. south australia is meant to be beautiful and lush. western australia has a harsher, starker beauty. and i'll get a more casual job, in retail, or hospitality, earn some money to shore up the funds. i think i'll much rather do that than work in an office, my last summer break- a true summer break, 3 months long.

there's plenty of time for work, a lifetime of it. in all the time we spend working on our resumes, do we ever count the cost of what we are not doing instead? while everyone is racing ahead, i might choose a different path, an amble along the backlanes of travel and casual work. cuz i see value in it, and i want to savour it while i can.