My Experiment with An Intern-ship

By: Wish Maker

The official website of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) shows that currently, there are over two hundred universities in the country. Almost 80 percent of these universities have independent departments of Mass communication or Media studies. In spite of the stark differences of quality of the faculty, availability of infrastructure, much talked about and least followed course outlines and stupid Faculty politics, they have one thing in common.

Guess what? An intern-ship course. Yes. You are right. The students are required do an intern-ship of three to four months at a place neither of their choice nor of their taste. In an ideal situation, it should be the responsibility of the academic institution of the student or more precisely, the course instructor to engage him with an organization for an intern-ship to gain on the ground experience where he could utilize his theoretical knowledge into practical work. But it does not happen in our part of the world.

The trail of misadventures begins firstly when a student has to find an intern-ship on his own. Secondly, he does everything during that honeymoon period of three to four months except The Intern-ship! This is what happened to me when I was to do an intern-ship at a "prestigious" F.M station.

I along with two other fellows somehow managed to get an intern-ship offer at "the prestigious" F.M station. Don’t know about other friends but I was very excited about it. I vividly remember that I could not sleep properly one night before I was going to join and work in the studio room of the famous F.M station.

The night went sleepless and I while assuming myself as an assistant radio producer made outlines for two programs. I did lot of brain storming and came up with two catchy names “Blue Boys” and “She-roes”. Both the programs were visualized to target the youth audience, one for boys and one for girls. I was thinking of myself a genius cum producer cum RJ. But all my expectations were dashed when I was asked to sit in a fan less room during the scorching heat of June and to wait for the orientation with the station head for the approval of my brain" Childs".

To my utter disappointment, the gentleman station master didn’t show up that day due to some unavoidable circumstances and I was asked to come the next day at 9 am sharp by a not so beautiful young lady who flattered herself by telling me that she was the youngest and the most famous RJ FM 101 ever had. She also quite humbly availed the rare opportunity of telling me about her fan following on her face book page with exact number of followers and why had she preferred this F.M station over others. I nod my head, raised my eye brows and made my ears stand up to make her feel that I was astonished and quite impressed by her achievements. I bade her good bye, came back home and told mother about the fantastic first day at intern-ship that I had!

The next day I went to the Radio Station with a hope that I would get a chance to meet the honourable station head who would offer me a coke and allow me to execute my programs. This time I met him in his oval room. He asked me to help myself by taking a glass of water from a red plastic water Cooler and instructed me to use the glass with extreme care and put it upside down over the cooler after drinking the hot water in the hot day of June the 5th from a hot water cooler! I did as instructed,took my seat and and spread a smile on my face.

He further asked me to take some more water and whether I was feeling comfortable. To which I said “yes. I am absolutely at home sir”. Afterwards, he extended his warm feelings and said that Mr. Waqar I have spoken to Mr. Hassan Sajjad. He is an extremely experienced Producer of our proud team. You would work under his supervision and learn a lot. You may go now and wait for Mr. Hassan Sajjad in his cabin.

I left the station head’s room and went to see my producer. Luckily, he was in his cabin. He greeted me and said that I needed not to take the pains of coming to his office daily rather my intern-ship certificate would reach me at my home address within a week. And with that reply all the euphoria about "The Intern-ship Thing" came to an abrupt end.