The financial relief I received during my Master’s changed what was possible.
Towards the end of my master’s first year, I was still working on the municipal street-cleaning and greening project. My first year of master’s study overlapped with the second year of that project, and the two-year contract we had signed was due to expire during the first quarter of my second year.
The future was uncertain.
But my financial circumstances had improved. For the first time, I could afford to apply for entry-level GIS jobs and attend interviews without worrying about how I would pay for the journey or meet the immediate costs associated with starting a new job.
So, I started applying for GIS internships.
And this time, the calls started coming.
I attended several interviews with different government departments and in different places. About a month before the municipal project was due to end, I received two internship offers from the same national government department: one at the head office in Pretoria and another at the provincial office in Polokwane.
I chose Polokwane. It was closer to home and within Limpopo.
Although the municipal project was eventually extended, I left when my original contract expired. At the beginning of the second quarter of my master’s second year, I started working as a GIS intern.
Later that year, while doing the internship, I submitted the final version of my master’s dissertation and graduated.
For the first time, my academic training and the career I wanted were beginning to converge.
The Value of an Internship
The internship offered more than employment.
My master’s research involved GIS and Remote Sensing, and that was the field in which I wanted to build my career. I also wanted to register with the professional body regulating the geomatics profession, then known as PLATO and now the South African Geomatics Council (SAGC).
Professional registration required both appropriate qualifications and relevant experience. The internship therefore gave me an opportunity to acquire that experience while working with registered professionals who could mentor me through the process.
But it was still a one-year contract.
I had learned enough about temporary employment not to wait until the final month before asking what would happen next.
So, I kept applying for jobs.
Eventually, I received an offer for a short-term GIS position in George, Western Cape.
Then something happened that made the decision much more difficult.
My supervisor and director called me into the director’s office.
They didn’t want me to leave.
They told me they had seen potential in me. They had also noticed something that I had not fully recognised in myself. When the person directly supervising us left, I had naturally started assuming some responsibility for coordinating the other interns.
They told me they could see me becoming a manager one day and wanted to develop me towards that.
Initially, I was convinced.
There was, however, one problem.
I would have to remain an intern.
Doing More for Less
Over the weekend, I discussed the decision with a friend.
Something bothered us.
If my potential had become visible partly because I was already assuming greater responsibilities, why should recognising that potential require me to continue doing more while remaining an intern?
That conversation reminded me of something one of my Honours lecturers at the University of Venda had told us.
He was critical of government internship programmes, particularly because of their potential to expose young graduates to exploitation.
He acknowledged the counterargument. Internships give graduates experience, financial independence and an entry point into professions where employers demand experience from people who have had little opportunity to obtain it.
His objection was more specific.
The danger begins when a graduate develops beyond the original purpose of the internship, assumes greater responsibilities and produces increasingly valuable work, but the organisation continues treating that person as cheap temporary labour.
I finally understood what he had been warning us about.
I declined the extension.
I took the short-term position in George.
And I left without completing one of the things I had hoped to achieve through the internship: professional registration.
Looking at the decision purely from a career-security perspective, it was questionable.
I was leaving an organisation where management said they recognised my leadership potential. The internship was being extended to give us additional time to register professionally. Instead, I was travelling from Limpopo to the Western Cape for another short-term contract.
But there is an important distinction between being grateful for an opportunity and becoming permanently indebted to it.
Internships and short-term employment can transform the lives of young graduates. They certainly transformed mine.
That is precisely why they should not be allowed to become mechanisms through which capable graduates continue doing progressively more for progressively less.
An opportunity can be valuable and still reach the end of its usefulness.
Sometimes growth requires recognising when that point has arrived.
Join the conversation
How should a young professional distinguish between an opportunity that is still developing them and one that has started benefiting from their development without properly recognising it?
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