Apprenticeship

Today’s NY Times talks about student internships, mostly those students take to get them into college and out of college and into a job. Of course there are now middlemen who broker internships for a fee. Can’t get a job out of college? Have your parents pay for you to take an internship! That negates the intent.

That’s not how it worked when I grew up. I paid to go to cooking school and paid to go to my unpaid internship so I could get a job cooking and actually make money. I lived in a cabin with a privy lock on the door and no heat. I bought $5 of wood every night but could only make it last until about 3:00 a.m. then I froze. Nothing on the windows, flying termites all over the bathroom so I had to make a ritual of boiling water in the tub, close bathroom door in the morning and block it everywhere with towels.

I was lucky that the people who leased the cabin to me left a mattress downstairs with a few blankets, and a couple of dishes and pots and pans. He moved next door with his girlfriend but I never saw him, except when our shifts collided at work.

As these rich people buy internships for their unemployable children, one wonders what our world is coming to. These rich WASP’s run the country but their kids are stupid and marrying fellow rich WASP’s and it seems the gene pool peaked about 100-150 years ago with Andrew Carnegie and now it’s going downhill rapidly but they can pay to keep that slide going. At least for now until their kids run the banking, insurance and other industries into the ground because their parents bought them an internship and like one of my favorite thespians, John Houseman, used to shill, “they earn it” but these folks don’t.

My husband runs into firms that will only hire “Ivy League.” Nonetheless, they’re headquartered in Texas. Hate to say it but New Yorkers are too snobby to move to Texas, and Texans will be treated like cow patties in NYC. I’m not talking racial equality, which I champion alongside women’s rights, I’m talking a southern man in a northern town, being looked down at (with a physics degree) as stupid because he has a trace of a Texas accent.

Whatever our families have, they’ve earned the hard way. My dad was the first in his family to go to college and he has a doctorate in higher education. My mother graduated from college after I did but summa cum laude (I was dean’s list) and passed her CPA exam first time out. All our families have wanted for money but found a way to succeed legally using their brains and hard work.

Perhaps we should let the bluebloods die out as a breed, the only other option is for a few to fall in love with those of the working class and make something of themselves through their offspring. Think about it, Dee