NOT to hop online and publicly embarrass your boss because he or she is hard on you. Seems pretty obvious, right? Well, apparently it’s not because it happened. And since some young intern was dumb enough to do that, I thought maybe it was necessary to remind interns-to-be of a few other obvious things you SHOULD NOT DO NO MATTER HOW AWFUL YOUR BOSS OR HOW BORING YOUR INTERNSHIP IS. Unless, of course, you never want to work in your field again.

So here goes:

Looking at porn in the office: Really? Are you that in need of a 3pm pick-me-up? If so I think we have a larger issue to deal with. There’s nothing wrong with porn, but let’s keep that habit at home, K?

Turning down assignments: When you’re an intern, you’re gonna get a lot of really boring assignments. But if you do enough of those really boring assignments, you will get to do some really amazing ones. Turn down those assignments and, well, you’re an idiot. You are an intern and your job is to do the crappy work. Not because you’re some slave or something, but because not doing it shows your boss that you’re not willing to put in the hard work to move up. And that, for those of you not getting the point, is not a good message to send.

Using social media to vent: It’s PUBLIC, duh.

Showing up hungover: It’s one thing to be hungover at work (hey, it happens); it’s quite another to be clutching a Gatorade with your head in the trash can under your desk.

Painting your nails at your desk: Or do anything that screams, “I’m not here to work hard” (or stinks up the entire office). What’s more important to you: perfect cuticles or finding a job that allows you to support yourself so you don’t have to live in your parents’ basement for years after you graduate?

Wearing a mini-skirt and no undies: Not only is that just plain wrong, but imagine how uncomfortable it is to have naked vajay on leather. Yipes.

Using AIM/GChat at work: Okay, so you shouldn’t be talking to your friends at work….but everyone obviously does. So just be careful. You don’t want to accidentally send your boss an IM meant for your BFF. You know, the one discussing your one-night-stand from last night… in graphic detail.

Disappearing: If you aren’t being paid, you may feel that it’s okay to take 4-hour lunch break. Um, it’s not. Especially if you come back from said lunch break intoxicated…or carrying an armful of shopping bags.

Swearing: When asked to do something, “Absolutely” is a good response. “F*ck yeah!” is not. And “That sounds sh*tty” is really not.

Again, these things may seem obvious to you, but clearly some people need a refresher course. If only that Marc Jacobs intern had sought me out for advice before they made the biggest mistake of their professional career.

Summer used to mean a few things: sleep-away camp, s’mores, arts and crafts, and trying to find a dry Speedo.  Unfortunately, for most of us who aren’t Michael Phelps, finding a dry Speedo and swimming our lives away won’t be very beneficial to our futures. Nor will concocting the perfect s’more, made with the most awesomely browned marshmallow ever.

So now, summer means one thing: interning.

Internships are probably the most important thing you can have on your resume these days and summer is the perfect time to gain that coveted interning experience: you don’t have to work around a class schedule and you can really focus on the job. But there’s more to a summer internship than just showing up. If you’ve landed yourself an internship this summer and you want to make the most of it, there are a few things to remember. I’ve been doin’ the internship thing for a long time, so let me share some of my hard-earned knowledge.

1. Coffee really does make the world go round.
Your daily Starbucks run may classify you as the “coffee bitch,” but through the transitive property, your power is greater than you know.  Your boss, their assistant, and 10 other colleagues send you to retrieve their crack-in-a-cup.  It’s their fuel for the day; they couldn’t function without it.  If you failed to get the coffee, the company would fall to pieces, so basically you’re the CEO.

2. The word “no” does not exist.
Kindergarten teachers and parents alike have us fooled; “no” is not part of the English language, it is only a myth.  When asked a question while interning, your answer is always YES.  There is no task that is “beneath” you and you need to be willing to do anything.  If you turn down an opportunity, your employer will view you as lazy and that is one of the worst professional reputations to have.

3. The copy machine has more functions than you think.
Unless super old-school, copy machines can do just about anything.  It may be embarrassing to ask, but make sure you know the extent of this brilliant machinery.  Memorize the name and Google it when you get home.  If you find yourself copying for an extreme amount of time doing an absurd project, chances are there is any easier way to get it done. And when you figure out that way, your superiors will be very impressed.

4. It is OK to lie (a little bit) to get ahead.
We all experience the catch 22: you wont be selected for opportunities if you have no experience, but you can’t get the experience if you’re not given the chance. If you are one of many interns, sometimes it is hard to stand out, and even harder to be chosen for special tasks.  In certain cases, it is OK to pretend you have done something even if you have not.  As long as you are confident that you won’t be completely clueless, you can exaggerate past experience to gain favor over the other interns.

5. Life isn’t by the books.
No matter what industry you are interested in going into, there are certain procedures, rules, etc. that you will learn in school.  Your classes teach you the “right” way to do things, and how things are technically supposed to operate.  One of the biggest lessons you will learn from interning, is that taking a short-cuts isn’t cheating; it’s a very smart strategy.  Interning teaches you how things are really done, as opposed to how they’re supposed to be done according to your textbook. These valuable lessons are ones you can’t learn in a classroom.

6. Have no regrets: internships that you dislike are just as important as the ones you do like. You may find yourself hating an internship and complaining that it is something you NEVER want to do.  That’s great news.  The best way to find something that you truly want to do, is ruling out the things you don’t want.  There is no way to find out until you try it, so gaining this knowledge is so important.

Last spring, I was gearing up to graduate and was waiting for the job offers to come rolling in. Instead, the only opportunity that came my way was a summer internship. At the time, I was making plenty of money waiting tables, but I knew that the added experience of an internship would add to my credentials– even if it meant taking a pay cut. So I moved to upstate New York to a place that was a five-hour drive from everyone I would care to visit.

When I first got there, I quickly realized that this job sucked. My boss, the woman who had hired me, misinformed me when I had inquired about the hours, the workload, and the learning potential of the position during my interview. However, by the end of August, when it was time to pack up and move on, I realized I had just had one of the best summers of my life.

Before I go into the ways that you, too, can make the most of your summer internship, let me explain why mine was so terrible. I had been hired by a nonprofit regional theater company as an administrative intern for their summer season. As an English major who was trying to break into theater, that sounded right up my alley when my boss had described my duties. However, when I arrived, I quickly learned that the majority of my time would be spent serving as assistant house manager — ripping tickets and listening to patrons bitch for 8 shows a week.

Though I had thought that I would build my portfolio by working side-by-side with the theater’s Educational Coordinator, my first week was spent vacuuming dust off of the theater’s 500 seats and battling the cobwebs that had set in while the venue was dark for the winter.

But I came out OK and you can too. Here are some tips for making the most of that craptastic summer internship:

1. Make friends.

All work and no play…. right? Hey, if the workload sucks, at least you can form a support group and walk away with some valuable new relationships. I had another intern who had the same responsibilities as me, and though our personalities are very different, we couldn’t help but develop a strong friendship. I was the crazy one who showed her how to open up, and she was the level-headed one who talked me off a ledge every time I freaked out about a bad decision. Now, she lives in Japan– go figure– and we Skype several times a week.

Besides the other intern, I got to a point halfway through the summer when I decided to show everyone the “real” me. Take this advice with a grain of salt, because there is a fine line between work and play, but halfway through the summer, I totally let my guard down and started partying it up. I learned how to work the room, and one night, one of my coworkers informed me, “Kathryn, you ARE the party.” Later in the summer, I organized a keg party that everyone in the company attended- young and old, interns and lifers, actors, tech crew, directors- everyone. When the summer came to an end, even the box office team gushed that nobody had ever brought every department together like that.

2. Take on more responsibilities.

I was clearly not going to build my resume simply by performing custodial duties every week. So I made it clear that I was willing to work extra hard in order to be given more tasks. I spoke to the Educational Coordinator and expressed my interest in evaluating script submissions for her, and she gave me scripts to read in my own time (yes, I am a nerd, but at least I was using the skill set I had developed in college). When word spread that I was willing to work outside of my normal intern duties, I was rewarded by the Costume Supervisor, who paid me an extra $40 a week to serve as a dresser on one of the shows. In Intern World, $40 goes a long way. If there’s anything I’ve learned from internships, it’s that everything is what you make of it. You’re not going to get experience if you go home every day and bitch that you just spent 8 unpaid hours making photocopies. But if you put yourself out there, you can garner an infinite amount of experience.

3. Network.

Making yourself known and networking is one of the most invaluable perks that can come with an internship, if you take the initiative. By taking on more responsibilities and becoming the Social Mascot of the company I worked for, I met a LOT of people. I didn’t have to volunteer with the Education department, but not only did doing so boost my resume, it allowed me to get close enough with the coordinator that she offered to serve as my reference when I left the internship. Besides, industry professionals started where you are now, so use the “intern card” to your advantage. Ask one of the head honchos of the company to have an informational meeting with you. You will get to describe your skills set, receive advice, and display initiative that your self-appointed mentor will appreciate. How can someone say “no” to a struggling intern? Even if you’re stuck in a department that isn’t right for you, reach out to a coworker and ask if you could shadow him or her for the day. Hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

4. Read.

If you’re bitching about spending several hours a day filing and photocopying, you might as well find a way to make these menial tasks matter. Photocopying contracts? Read them. Filing meeting minutes? Read them. You’ll learn about everything, including the microscopic details that your superiors schedule four-hour fourways to brood over at length. If you’re given a document, your boss trusts you with it. Look at what it is, and take in the info. Do NOT repeat any of it, because many items will be confidential, but there’s nothing wrong with seeing how other professionals handle their business affairs, is there? Because hey– you’ll be there one day.

5. Speak up.

If you’re not being challenged, or if there are flaws in your intern program, keeping mum won’t help. Find someone you trust- another colleague, your internship coordinator, maybe even your boss- and express the fact that there’s room for improvement (politely, of course). Chances are, the company won’t want to risk losing a free employee halfway through the summer when the pool of applicants has already dried up. It’s even better if you have a plan, so you can suggest an alternative. It’s pointless to wait until your exit interview to gripe about how miserable you were this summer, so stand up for yourself and see if you can make a change NOW.

Learning the ropes of an internship is one thing, but becoming accustomed to a big city for the first time while starting an internship can make those first few days all the more nerve wracking.

After scoring two internships in New York City last summer, I couldn’t have been more excited – and then the realization of living alone in a city I didn’t know anything about terrified me. From the moment my plane landed at La Guardia, I was a nervous wreck until I made it through my first few days.

By the end of my time as a summer intern, though, I had the interning and city gag down pat. In fact, I couldn’t get enough, so I decided to come back to New York in January to intern again. With three different internships under my belt in one of the biggest cities in the world, here are some tips that helped me become a big city intern faster than I thought was possible.

Timing is everything: Since most big cities rely on public transportation, you will need to leave earlier than you normally would anywhere else. For example, if it takes you ten minutes to walk from your residence to your company’s building, you should leave twenty minutes early – at least for the first few days – to make sure you get there on time. Also, who knows what can happen on any given day. Traffic could hold you up one day, a morning rain shower could crowd the subways, or a longer than anticipated line at Starbucks might hold you back while waiting for your morning Venti Mocha. Always give yourself some leeway because this way, you won’t be late and you will save yourself the stress of worrying about getting to the job on time.

Transportation shortcuts exist: Most transportation systems, such as the subway and buses in major cities from New York to San Francisco, have websites that you can find all the information you will ever need at. However, most helpful is the popular HopStop, a website that will tell you what subway trains to take, what bus to transfer to, and how many blocks you need to walk to make it to your destination and how long all of that moving and shaking will take you. It not only informs you about maintenance hold-ups, but it will give you different routes for you to pick from. And to top it all off, you can use HopStop on your cell phone. You won’t get lost with this website in your life, I promise.

Make friends with the doormen: Whether your company’s office has a doorman or you are running errands for an author out of her apartment, get to know the people working the front desk or building doors. Not only will you have a smiling face to greet you in the morning, but you will have someone that knows the city well to direct you in a time of need. This past January, the doormen at the apartment building I constantly ran errands out of were some of the nicest people I met my entire internship. Constantly helpful, they always made me laugh no matter how cold it was in New York or how many boxes I had to carry blocks away. They will brighten your day, and by talking to them, you will brighten their day.

Band-Aids make good friends, too: I can’t begin to count the amount of band-aids I went through during all my internships. It didn’t matter how old and broken in my shoes were, they gave me big, ugly blisters. Why? Well, because the amount of walking I did while interning was far beyond the normal amount of any day around a college campus. I learned quickly to keep a box of Band-aids in my over-sized bag and everyone should do the same. Trust me, you don’t want to be the girl limping with a bloody shoe. Also, since interns usually deal with a lot of paper, nasty paper cuts are guaranteed and you won’t want to have bloody fingers when handing faxes into your boss.

Keep a detailed notebook: Purchase a small spiral notebook and keep it in your bag the entire internship experience. While you write tasks or errands you need to run throughout the day in it, you can also keep addresses of locations you visit, phone numbers and other contact information, and any thoughts you feel need to be recorded all in the same place. If the notebook has pockets, slide in all the business cards you get. Notebooks also come in handy because you can write directions down in it, which saves you time and embarrassment from opening a huge subway map in the middle of a metro station to see where you need to go. At the end of your internship, you will have pages filled of duties you completed (which will make you feel good about yourself) along with a lot of other information that could one day come in handy (for example, a lot of the locations I visited during my summer internships were places I wanted to go again – and I was able to reference them from my notes during my winter internship). This is a good way to keep all your stuff organized so you aren’t leaving things all over the place.

Keep up the pace: Internships in big cities tend to go at a very fast pace. Make sure you keep up. Some days it will honestly suck and you will probably hate it – but you are there to learn. Soak everything in – the good, the bad, the bloody socks from your new shoes, the compliments from your new boss – everything. You were picked to be an intern for a reason, and as long as you remember that, you shouldn’t stop working hard to show that you really do belong there.

Make the most of it: A major perk of interning in a big city is actually being in a big city! You will have a ton of culture and excitement at your finger tips, so live it up! Although working may wear you out, make sure you spend time seeing what the city has to offer. Not only will you gain immense amounts of work experience, but you will do so in a cultural environment – there really isn’t much more you can ask for during an internship!

Is the spring semester half over already? Sadly, it’s true. And while some of our peers will be looking forward to spending the summer at one pool party after another, many of us are currently scouring job listings for summer internships.

Internships are a great way to add experience to your resume, make industry connections, and discover what kind of career path you really want to follow. While school’s in session, it can be hard to fit an internship into your schedule; in the summer, however, you can devote more hours to the gig.

Unfortunately, just because you sign up to work a 40-hour work week from May to August, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get paid like a fulltime employee.

Many internships pay nothing. In fact, they often offer college credit as a means of skirting the salary, but in that case, you’ll find yourself coughing up summer tuition money just to work at the company that hired you. While there are plenty of paid internships out there, they usually offer a stipend rather than a modest hourly wage. So, if you’re going to be working your ass off, how do you decide whether the internship is worth it?

Paid internships certainly have a bit more sparkle at first glance. However, there’s a reason they call it an internship and not a job. Unless it’s a major company, you could probably make more money serving omelettes at Denny’s… but waitressing the third shift isn’t going to bulk up your resume. So, while you may be lucky enough to get paid this summer, you will have to figure out if you can live with a meager paycheck.

Paid internships may or may not be more challenging than an unpaid gig. After all, if you’re expected to work a full-time schedule, you’ll really become part of the office, and get to know your coworkers. You’ll be involved with bigger projects, because the bosses will know you can work on them throughout the week, rather than worry about you only tending to assignments on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday basis. Plus, if they’re bothering to pay the interns, they must think highly of the students they choose for the task, right?

Note that I said “may or may not” above. Many non-profit companies (or smaller businesses with less budget) employ a smaller staff than a Fortune 500 biz. In that case, you may be given a broad spectrum of responsibilities and may have the opportunity to develop a close relationship with your superiors. Any internship will probably require you to do a fair share of answering phones, photocopying, and filing, but you might also get to work for several different “departments” at an unpaid internship- especially if the department consists of one associate.

If you are moving away to do an internship, you should try to plot out how much your living expenses will be in an unfamiliar city. It can be more difficult to find a second job outside your home town, and, if you’re being paid at all, the internship might require more commitment. In reality, landing a paid internshp might not be as profitable, especially if you don’t have time to find another source of income.

Most employers usually appreciate their interns for working for free, and may be more lenient with the rules of the job. Many unpaid internships ask for less hours per week and try to be flexible with scheduling. This means that you can keep a few shifts at your regular summer job in order to pay for your gas to the internship!

Plus, unpaid internships come with some sort of business-related incentive, such as free parking permits or subway cards. You know, so you don’t lose money coming to work. Depending on the company, they may offer free meals if there’s a cafeteria in the building. If that’s the case, then hey- it won’t cost you anything besides time to go to work and the experience might help you get a higher paying job in the future.

There are pros and cons to either side here. If you are going to look into an internship, you should truly ask yourself what you want out of the experience and be prepared to ask questions before taking the job. If you’re not getting paid, it’s easy to get frustrated with menial tasks such as photocopying, filing, and going on Starbucks runs for the bigshots. Then again, an unpaid internship might be intimate enough for you to truly pick your boss’s brain during downtime and get a mentor out of the experience.

No matter what, my advice to future interns of the world is to take the next few months to try to save up and secure sufficient resources to provide for yourself over the summer – this way, you can choose the position that is truly best for yourself and your career goals, rather than only focusing on the monetary aspects of the job.

Personally, I’ve done my fair share of underpaid labor, whether in the form of an unpaid internship, paid internship, or a generally sh*tty part-time job that didn’t pay well enough. While the sh*tty part-time jobs did nothing but supply my weekend drinking funds, all of the internships let me walk away with something more valuable than money. I’ve been paid in experience, connections, all the coffee I can drink, and every random perk from catered meetings to free t-shirts to tickets to killer events. So while the payment issue is something that you should consider when taking one, the bottom line is that you won’t be an intern forever, so, for now, money shouldn’t be the first priority.