I have to admit that I’m becoming incredibly impatient with emails that assure me that my resume and qualifications are very impressive, despite the fact that the organization was clearly unimpressed enough that I didn’t receive a call or a request for references.  I appreciate politeness, but only when it’s not polite nonsense.  Language and expression matter, and the way I’m told something matters as much to me as the concrete facts communicated.  Which is why this email in particular irritated me: it was the job-search equivalent to “It’s not you, it’s me.”

I found an unpaid internship in development at a political advocacy organization.  I was researching information for a (paid) job application, and I found a posting for an unpaid Development Intern at a non-profit that a friend has a (paid) job at.  G was my ambulatory verbal resume, and I met with their Development Director, who was very excited at the prospect of having an intern who actually knew what all the Development administrative stuff means, and has plenty of experience (and, in a better economy, would probably be a paid development worker somewhere).

They have one of their big fundraising events on Saturday, so I’ve basically been doing whatever’s been thrown at me to support the event.  I called Senators’ offices to confirm the people sitting at their tables, called previous attendees to encourage them to attend again, called every JoAnn Fabrics store in Portland to find metallic gold “Décor Sand,” called wine merchants to price wine for the event, and separated decorative willow sticks to spray paint gold.

I also created the RSVP list that they’ll be using, I believe, to make the name tags for the event and track payments.  I did not have any particular reason to use all the fancy excel things I know about–drop-down buttons, angling cells, and pivot tables–but I was in charge of creating it.

I also cleaned up the desk they put me at.  The previous denizen kept things much less well-organized than I’m inclined to, so I keep finding grant proposal materials from the 90s, and gift certificates that didn’t sell from this past spring’s annual auction.  I found two amazing ballet tickets ($100/ticket amazing) that, due to disorganization, expired.  Lesson: organization is very important.  Also, don’t eat food over your keyboard.  Ew.

Once this event is over, I’m helping with a chocolate-based event (win!) and the Executive Director is going to have me research prospects and help prepare major prospect information packets; the organization is actually three related organizations that do different work as tax laws allow, and different appeals will work better with different donors.  A few of my recent job postings have mentioned prospect research, and using FilemakerPro, so at least I’ll be developing job skills while not paying back my student loans.

The organization is aware that I’m looking for a job that pays, but can use my help in the meantime, and I’ll be working on skills to put on my resume while I’m there.  And, usefully, I’ll have a response other than “making cupcakes” when someone asks what I’ve been up to since graduation.