Internal Affairs

"Have you guys read the USA Today column about summer interns?" Katie Fairbank, an enterprise reporter, asked Josh and me. "Don't get any ideas when he talks about feeding you."

"Oh, they feed us," we replied. Except we didn't get lunch today. We insinuated it might have challenged the quality of life to which we have become accustomed. That part was a joke. Yesterday I ate Cheetos and a pop-tart at my desk as I finished some work I couldn't do during CCI training.

Either way, Craig Wilson makes some good points in his column. He explains what it's like for a newsroom veteran to see a "new crop" of interns every year. The fresh faces. The ambition. The baseless confidence.

What the veterans don't see is the enthusiasm most of us have when we are telling our friends about the things we see in the newsroom. The fights over Sunday leads. The macabre sense of humor about the discovered corpses. The Pulitzer Prize winners walking around like...like...like normal people. The stories can get a little tiring to the friends making sandwiches over the summer or filing papers in their work-study jobs.

Also, I had no idea newspapers were sent so much free stuff. Books. Movies. CDs. Tickets.

He mentions how old the interns make him feel. How they remind him of his mortality.

Even still, that beats sitting in a lecture hall, listening to a professor reminding US how old he is.