The Boys (and Girls) of Summer

With yesterday being Memorial Day, the summer season has kicked off.  That means that we trade the crush of the school groups for the crush of the summer crowds, and things are starting to get pretty busy.  Fortunately, at many facilities, help is on the way.

Like the barn swallows that, after months of absence, are again whirling across the zoo, the summer brings with it the summer interns and other seasonal help.  True, there's usually an intern or two during the rest of the year, but this is when they come out in force, when we need them the most.  Some of them are here to get credit for college internships.  Others are here because they want to get a leg-up in looking for a job in the zoo field.  Others are just doing it because it looked like a fun way to spend the summer.  Whatever the reason, we're genuinely (usually) glad that they're here.

Summer help is an investment.  In the beginning of the season, they can be major time sponges.  Understandably, they need to be shown how to do everything.  Things that we take as second nature and assume are very obvious need to be spelled out, sometimes demonstrated several times, and, as someone who has been on both sides of the intern-keeper divide, not all keepers are equally good at explaining/teaching students how to do things.  Things we assume are obvious because we've done them 1000 times might not be to a student trainee.  Still, by the end of the summer, most of these interns are running like well-oiled machines, and there are days when I honestly don't know how we would have gotten by without them.

It's worth noting, though, that the summer helpers aren't meant to be just labor to bolster our ranks.  They're supposed to be getting things out the summer too, usually some combination of knowledge, professional development, and positive experiences.  I try to make sure that, no matter how much grungy, menial tasks the interns would have on a given day - cleaning this pool, fixing this fence - there was also some sort of special memory or lesson that they'd get from the day.  Maybe it's a new technique I'd show, like how to candle an egg or determine the sex of an alligator.  Maybe it's a cool encounter with an animal - "Okay, we're going to churn up the mud wallow for the rhino exhibit - but first, let's go into the barn and meet the rhinos."  These are the moments which serve as the reward for a hard day's work.

Of course, there should also be other rewards as well.  I've done my share of unpaid internships in the past, but I've increasingly come to believe that interns should be paid, if only modestly.  This not only helps make internships more accessible to students who might not have the luxury of being able to afford an unpaid summer of work, but it also helps set expectations.  Some of the worst interns I've ever had in the past were able to coast by because they weren't getting paid - it let them feel that they had no obligation to us, and management wouldn't get rid of them because they weren't costing us anything.

When you work, you should be paid.  Simple as that.