Staying Focused for Week Seven

When I first began my internship my biggest concern was self-confidence. I think I’ve made a lot of progress just by gaining experience; I’m a lot more confident when editing and giving my comments on submissions. Now that I’m pretty comfortable at Friends Journal and familiar with most of the tasks I complete day-to-day, I’m facing a new challenge: staying focused and engaged. This week I did a lot of copyediting and proofreading. I entered corrections into articles in Word and I proofread the corrections that other interns made. All of this was in preparation for sending our corrections on the October articles back to their authors for approval. I also continued to work on the milestones project, entering data into an excel spreadsheet.

I really like editing and proofreading and I don’t mind data entry, but doing those things for hours at a time has begun to take a toll on my attention span. At an unpaid internship, where the main incentive is one’s own desire to learn, staying focused can take a lot of self-discipline; I’m not working towards a promotion or a paycheck. So how can I steer clear of boredom and continue to work thoroughly and quickly?

Well, I’ve recently made a few discoveries that I think will help (and in hindsight they seem fairly obvious). First, if I’m beginning to feel bored or distracted after multiple hours of copyediting, it’s ok to change what I’m doing. When given a task or project, my inclination is to work on it until it’s finished. But if it takes a long time and isn’t time sensitive, my supervisor has actually encouraged me to take a break and work on one of my ongoing projects whenever I feel the need. My supervisor has also been very open to me asking for something else to work on, which brings me to my next realization: it’s ok to ask for more work.

At first I felt like I had to wait for someone to give me something to do and I felt a little shy about asking for more work. However, since there are six other interns, it probably isn’t easy for my supervisor to remember who is doing what and who needs more to do. Asking for work can only help both of us. Yes, I’ve definitely felt tempted to check Facebook or to take a break and find the nearest Starbucks, but I also realized that by the end of this internship I’ll have three things to show for my time: what I’ve learned, the connections I’ve made, and the reputation I’ve formed. A quick Facebook perusal wouldn't contribute to any of that. Personally, reminding myself of those things is a better motivator than a caffeinated beverage would ever be (which would only make me more antsy).