In turns out unpaid internships aren’t so bad

In turns out unpaid internships aren’t so bad

I’m glad, ecstatic, amazed, overjoyed and every other happy adjective you can think of. Today I was told that my internship was turning into a full-time job. I’m to start work as an employee on Monday (12th of August) and I’ll finally get paid for the work that I’ll be doing after suffering 6 weeks on no income and purely just burning through my savings.

What’s the job

I’ll be working in Central London of off Oxford Street for a division that does Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for clients in the United Kingdom. I don’t have an assigned title yet, but I’ve kind of crowned myself as an SEO Specialist. I’ll be working on 50% technical SEO and 50% content marketing. Essentially I’ll be doing a mixture of both and I’m hoping to improve my technical knowledge of implementation and simply doing things correctly. The reason I’m doing this type of job is because when I was 16/17 I managed my own web hosting business and it taught me about digital and I naturally learned about SEO. In fact, this job is quite ideal and is the perfect job opportunity and I’m hoping to grow out and become a professional in this field as I’m already quite passionate about this type of work.

What did I do to stand out

This is a question that is quite specific to the job that you’re doing. The main things that I did to stand out was to ask as many questions as I possibly could come up with and to act upon those answers immediately. While I am reluctant to go into specifics of what I had done, I feel I can confidently say that I achieved quite a bit for the team. If you can achieve and become successful by going the extra mile and doing significant things then you’ll get noticed and you’ll possibly turn that unpaid internship into something. I think that getting noticed and doing work that looks credible is essential and being consistent in doing well is another eye opener.

Abolishing Unpaid Internships

I hear the argument for abolishing unpaid internships and I do partly agree with this. I however feel that this argument has been struck down by the very fact that I’ve managed to turn my internship into a job. Also, I don’t think internships are bad and people have a choice as to whether they’d want to do an internship. I mean, it’s not as if you’re being forced to do the work and it’s a way to learn and become part of an office experience and generally looks good on a blank CV. (My CV was not blank!) I also hear the argument that people are desperate and that employers are taking advantage of that fact; I’m afraid this is just the beginning of changing times and while I’m not a heartless bastard and I did indeed do an internship myself and as long as the business or company you’re interning with isn’t forcing you to do things you don’t want to do then I don’t see a problem. I’ve done a 6 week unpaid internship and I doubt the people arguing against internships have actually been interns before and if they have, I doubt they succeeded in getting job through their internship. (Otherwise they wouldn’t be complaining)

What does the future look like

The future looks quite bright. In fact, I’m looking to do a part-time course at Birkbeck University for Web Technologies. It’s a foundation degree that will help me excel and become more qualified in the field that I’m aiming for. They also have a campus in Stratford, although my new job is actually nearby to Birkbeck University’s main campus. I’m not yet sure if the course would be feasible for me as I’ll be working full-time and I have no idea if the part-time course could cater to my needs and if I could do the course around my job. However, if I can then great! I’ll definitely have to look into it and sign up for a course! Though I do have that feeling that I’ll be unable to do any external courses due to the nature of that job that I’ve entered.

Ordinary weekend

I spent most of this weekend with my family. My dad bought me a new headset, since I totally destroyed the previous one I had and I got new shoes as you can see down below. Although the picture sucks in terms of picture quality, it doesn’t look half bad and I’m too lazy to change the picture to a more high-res quality.

 

As usual when I ever see my dad, we usually get involved in debates and whatnot. But he always makes up these bullshit sources which have appeared out of no where. He makes shit up on the go just to support his argument. It is quite annoying especially when I actually back up my arguments with sources that exist on the internet. (Reputable sources; BBC, CNN, Aljazeera etc)
 

Then he goes on about how Europe is brought down the United Kingdom. Then I ask how… and he goes on about how in the 60’s there used to be a massive music industry. Which I don’t dispute. Then I ask him how that relates to Europe bringing the UK down and he said because “The music industry moved to the United States…” – Then I question how that has anything to do with Europe and he comes up with some bullshit I don’t even want to type since it will annoy me everytime I read it. 😀

 

Sometimes I think he just pisses me off on purpose. XD

 

Yeah a normal weekend. Oh and unfortunately I couldn’t get my damn Ritalin tablets. The hospital was closed. Hopefully I can get some tomorrow or sometime this week. 

 

Economic situation in Europe

From a few articles I've read on the economic mess in Europe is that Greece seems to be the contagious virus along with Spain and Italy. Though Greece being the largest of the contagion as they will likely be on EU benefits just to pay off their debt and their deficit for quite a long time. Especially as their economy is hardly growing with most of the population up in arms protesting about austerity measures being taken in Greece to curb deficit spending. 

 

Referendum on the United Kingdom leaving the EU

 

A lot of people want to leave the EU in the UK. It is the number one source of immigration into the UK and it costs a hell of a lot of money to stay in the EU. However some would argue that it is entirely beneficial for the UK to stay within the EU considering trade from the UK to the EU accounts for around 50% of overall exports which obviously brings in large revenues for UK companies and then that supplies government with more tax money.

 

Although some people also argue that the UK should be like Switzerland or Norway, who are not apart of the European Union though still having free trade agreements with the EU. This is viewed by many as a more beneficial stance since these countries are not affected by laws passed by the EU in Brussels. – Obviously as they are not part of the EU. From this point of view, the UK can be considered as a more sovereign nation. 

 

Recently the parliament in London voted on whether to issue a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union.  I believe it was knocked down however the back bench MP's still agreed to discuss the issue of staying in the EU or not, calling for a referendum to possibly happen in 2013. Possibly after the economic mess has been sorted or discovered in its full depth of numerous issues. 

 

The one thing I can agree on is that the UK should definitely not leave the EU now. Nor should it worry the EU market further by leaving and holding a referendum now. I believe it should happen at a later date as we need to be involved in making sure the EU doesn't sink any further into the economic hole. Why? As previously stated the UK exports 50% of its goods/products/services to the EU. If the EU goes down, the UK also goes down with the ship and the UK's economy won't grow and will slip back into recession, especially if that 50% market is wiped out. Although sometimes it is viewed by others I've spoken to that the UK isn't at-all part of the EU-ship, however I'm afraid we have a very large stake in Europe, to leave now would not be good and I don't think it would be good for the UK's future either. 

 

However at a later date when the economic situation is sorted or is at a more stable level, there should be discussions on staying in the EU or leaving.

 

My personal belief is that we should stay in the EU. Although it costs the UK a lot of money to stay, it is worth the money considering the fact UK citizens get access to any country within the other 26 countries within the EU. People who work abroad would certainly find it an issue if they suddenly needed to be claiming working visas, making the process for the ordinary person harder. Bilateral trade agreements can be made by the EU towards competing with other larger countries such as China and the United States. Collectively the EU is the largest economic union in the world per GDP, meaning the collective decision is influential on the world stage, as the UK doesn't have singularly by itself a large enough economy to be able to represent its will on the economic stage. 

 

As our economy is so dependent on the EU and vice versa, we need to be able to also make decisions from within the EU that reflect the will of our elected government. If we leave the EU we have no stake or say in what the EU can do or we can't vote against any measures taken within Europe which could possibly harm trade relations to and from the UK to Europe. Essentially, I don't believe it is worth the risk of leaving the EU because of these issues. What the UK does need to do, in partner with other EU countries is to try and reflect its will as the large economic forces that it is within the EU to reform the EU to UK standards; while this also means making concessions. 

WikiLeaks go!

WikiLeaks go!

As an avid supporter of WikiLeaks and the leaking of information which the government intends to hide, I have been following the recent release of 250,000 or so leaks from U.S. Embassy cables. People will argue sometimes that the leaks are insignificant, if they are so insignificant then why is there all this hype secretly behind government doors suggesting the closure of the site and its organization. Senators have even called for the execution of Julian Assange the said founder of the organization itself. So if the leaks are insignificant, why call for the killing of the person leaking the information.

I mean lets look at the facts here and lets look at what WikiLeaks is. It is a website which leaks information given to them. Remind you of something? How about newspapers or news corporations who die to get their hands on leaks such as these. I don’t think any government in the Western world let alone the United Kingdom (Where I’m from) has the right to stop the disclosure of this information, as we live in what is called a democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to do whatever the fickle sticks you want.  Or do we pay the price, that we live in a society where things are censored because our governments don’t want information released prior to release. If that is the case, tighten up on data security. The guy who leaked this information should not have been able to download the information. 250,000 documents is a lot, it is logical to think that it would have taken a long time to download all that. Where were the security measures to stop that. Perhaps to a degree there should be things that governments need to hide for national security, however what falls under that umbrella are things they shouldn’t hide, though which are because of the initiatives in place which allow them to hide things which they don’t want in public viewing. Yes, it can be abused, and just as we see in these leaks is information that should not be under the umbrella of “Classified” or “Top secret”. They could do the same with tax payer dollars, class it under some classified document which no one can view unless authorised and say that the money was spent for something top secret, such as building a nuclear bomb to destroy Chicago or something ridiculous like that.  The point is whether you can trust politicians, because one way or another you’ll always get a bad set of grapes in the bunch, who will try to distort, lie and cheat.

The second thing I wanted to talk about was the accusations against Julian Assange, with Swedish authorities accusing, then retracting, then going back their original assessment in trying to get Julian Assange arrested & perhaps tried over a sex charge. Doesn’t it seem weird that at the time of the release of these documents, he is being accused of these charges while also being hunted by interpol for the same charges. Though the charges by these authorities not being enough for British authorities to arrest Julian Assange, seeing as these assertions hold no bearing? I mean Interpol is ridiculously placing Julian Assange on its top wanted for sex crimes which doesn’t contain enough evidence for his actual arrest in countries such as the United Kingdom where he staying. They placed him on the top wanted… that in itself is absurd. Top wanted people should be reserved for people like murderers, killers, mass murderers, rapists (Of which Julian hasn’t been convicted of) or anything like that. It just comes strange to me that this revelation is released for his arrest when the U.S. embassy cables have been released. Seems way, way to convenient for me and I’m not an avid believer in conspiracies.

Man. I don’t know what is going on in this world right now. But it is pretty damn crazy.