The Only Thing You Have To Be At Age 23 Is Yourself.

Its been a while! For which I apologize. I had a 4 week internship at ITV Yorkshire which was so much fun, but really time consuming. I've wanted to work in TV production for a while and this was a really interesting experience for me, just to see how everything works and was run. I also met some brilliant people, who were really great to talk to and learn from.
In terms of first time work experience I was lucky to get such a good placement and some people were saying I am still quite young to start thinking about life outside of uni, but if you know what you want to do there is no harm in reaching for it as soon as you can. Its also a scary world I'll be exposed to when I no longer have the comfort of student finance or living my parent's house, with the recession and the tough job market and media in general is notoriously hard to crack (and I've probably watched Girls and Reality Bites so much it's making me paranoid about Adult Life). Hopefully the work experience I did and have done before will provide a strong platform for further work prospects.
I know for a lot of people getting into the industry they want after uni has been a real struggle. For some it seems like a battle between what they want to do and supporting themselves. The unpaid internship culture for many is an impossible reach as they can't afford to support themselves or even travel to their placement. Though I can see the employers' pov, as they are basically training people for nothing, there should be at least a living wage in place, or even travel or food expenses as these are people who are time they could be working in a job to support themselves. Sometimes it is a matter of balancing a placement and a job, but this can be trying on time, again these are people, is it really possible to balance two full time jobs and not get seriously ill?
What really annoys me about this issue particularly is the class bias this causes, people whose parents can afford to pay for their living expenses and can travel to major cities are going to outweigh people who cannot. This isn't a meritocratic system based on passion, talent or pragmatism, it is based on who can afford the free unpaid time. Everyone should have equal work opportunities and class barriers may not be as obvious as race or gender or disability bias but it is equally important.
This post was in part inspired by this article on VICE which got me kinda mad, written by someone who fails to see beyond their own middle class privilege and luck (he never mentions how he got his own writing break, but he never had to intern, which doesn't give him a leg to stand on imo). Yeah some people's attitudes may be unsatisfactory, but if they are being whiny and ungrateful, or don't do the jobs they're given YOU CAN FIRE THEM. There is no legal obligation for employers to keep interns on after all and you're not paying for them, obviously. I think the pressure groups do have a point and interns and employers deserve to have a proper ENFORCED policy to reduce exploitation and class bias. But what do I know? I'm so young it's probably a steaming pile of crap.
[FYI ITV has a paid internship scheme and keeps to UK laws on internships and work experience, many places however do not keep to these :(]
[picture from tumblr and quote from Reality Bites, which you should watch if you know what's good for you.]
[also I'm 19, not 23. That's the film quote dummy]