Reflections of an Almost 30 Year Old

My birthday is in two days. On August 23, 2015 I will be 27 years old. I don’t know how I feel about that. I never thought I’d get here to be honest. Only nine years ago, making it to my high school graduation and an 18th birthday felt like a pipe dream. It wasn’t because I was failing classes or dodging bullets, I was mostly scared of myself. In order for this to make even a little bit of sense, I need to tell a story. It’s one I’ve told in bits and pieces before, but I guess it’s time to put the whole story together now. I will be discussing suicide and depression so keep that in mind before reading on.

I was 17 years old when I started my senior year of high school. I was an above average student, passing all of my classes, and even taking a few advanced courses. I was also the very last girl left in the engineering program at my school and extremely proud of that fact. My teachers, my family, and friends saw a lot of potential in me and pressured me to be the absolute best I could be. I know they all had the best of intentions, but that pressure had a terrible effect on me. I never felt that I was good enough, I always wanted to be better. If I got a B on a test, I wanted an A. If I got an A, it should have been a higher A. If I scored perfectly, I was angry at myself for missing the extra credit question. I wanted pure perfection. If I didn’t get perfection I would spend weeks agonizing over how I was the worst, the stupidest person to walk the earth and I would never make it into any college.

Eventually, the college crunch hits and it’s time for SATs, ACTs, scholarship deadlines, FAFSAs, and college applications. In addition to this, I have the regular senior stuff (homecoming, yearbooks, prom, and graduation) to worry about. I come from a poor family and every last one of those things costs money. A significant amount of money. It was just me and my mother and she had bills to pay so everything else came out of my pocket. I worked as many hours as I could at the shoe store I was employed at and tried my hardest to make sure my grades didn’t drop. When I wasn’t working on homework or at work, I was at college recruitment events or looking everywhere for scholarships. Every waking moment of my life revolved around getting into the best college. My mother and brother were sure to remind me whenever they could that I would be the first in the family to go to college and to not let them down. Once again, I was sure they had the best of intentions, but the added pressure just weighed me down even more.

The second half of my senior year is when everything becomes a blur. That was when I snapped. I remember being in my living room, but I don’t remember why I was there. I was crying uncontrollably and I couldn’t breathe properly. My mother was there trying to calm me down, but nothing she said could penetrate the massive cloud of terror that enveloped me. That’s one thing I remember to this day, absolute terror. It felt like I was at the bottom of a deep, dark pit that was slowly closing in on me and I couldn’t escape. My mother didn’t understand what was happening and I couldn’t articulate what I was going through at the time. Somehow I calmed down and I was left alone. From that point on, it was like watching a movie. I felt myself get up and move away from the couch. I found a bottle of pain pills, emptied it, and lined them all up. I began to take the pills, one by one. The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed and continuing as normal.

While I didn’t succeed in killing myself, I did succeed in scaring myself. I knew if I did it once, I could do it again and when I did it would be much easier. I stopped making long term plans because I no longer knew if I’d be alive. My milestones became daily, weekly at the most. I took my SAT, I got some scholarships, I applied to college, and I graduated high school. Once I found myself in college, I had no idea what to do. College is all about setting yourself up for a career, but I had no idea what I wanted to do because I couldn’t bring myself to think that far ahead.

For the next few years I found myself just doing enough to get by. I left school after two years for a plethora of reasons and moved back home and started working a shitty retail job. After that I got married, moved across the country, got pregnant, and dealt with deployments and more moving. Here I am, almost 10 years after that first (and only) suicide attempt still struggling to think long term.

I’ve seen and done so much in my life, but I’ve held back from even more because of my own insecurities, doubts, and fears. I’ve been so scared of falling back into that pit I was in ten years ago that I’ve tried to maintain a nice, safe middle ground. I’ve thought for so long that if I just got by, I could make it to that next day and stick around a bit longer. That’s just not enough anymore. It’s not enough. I know that if I want to live, truly live, I need to put myself out there and do some scary things. Most importantly though, I have got to stop holding myself back. I can be my own worst enemy and that has got to stop. All of this is so much easier said than done though. Let’s see if 27 is the year when I finally let go.

The Level of Bullshit is Too Damn High!

There’s been a fair amount of bullshittery going around lately, but today seems to be a special kind of day. It’s one of those days where everything seems to pile on at once.

You have white people all across the board getting mad at Saida Grundy, a Black woman professor at Boston University, for calling out toxic white masculinity and the legacy of white supremacy. Apparently she did it in a way that wasn’t nice enough for them and it hurt a lot of feelings.

The white supremacists have come out in full force decrying her tweets as “racist,” because we all know racism is when Black people point out how toxic white masculinity and the white male ego is.

Please white men (and women), spare me your tears. The only reason her tweets elicited such a visceral reaction from you is because of your investment in white supremacy. You have a vested interest in keeping the system of white supremacy going and protecting toxic white masculinity at all costs. Saida Grundy’s tweets go directly against your goal, so you felt the need to attack. This kind of thing happens whenever a Person of Color (specifically Black Women) directly confront white supremacy. What she wrote wasn’t anything too new or surprising. For a good number of us, it was a common sense kind of thing. But please, do stay mad white people. Continue to prove Saida Grundy’s point for her.

While that was predictably horrible, what really drove me off a cliff today was an essay by Dr Sallee McLaren, an actual clinical psychologist. The title of said essay? “The part women play in domestic violence.”

“Hold on a second,” I hear you saying to your computer screen. “This could possibly be about how women can be abusers and how that needs to be addressed.”

“Oh you poor, sweet, naive little baby.” I say, shaking my head slightly while trying not to cry. “You’re about to get a horrible surprise.”

Red flag number one (if it didn’t come from the title alone) comes from the second little headline.

Women can only command real power once we socialise girls to take themselves seriously and develop mental grit.

I know what you’re thinking and yeah. That definitely means what you’re thinking it means. Our dear doctor thinks women just need to toughen up a bit if they wanna stop domestic violence. Don’t believe me? Here, have some more quotes.

To explain what I mean, I want to tell you about a scenario I frequently see played out in various forms in my work in relation to domestic violence. Let’s say we have a male and female couple who are living together and he is becoming increasingly violent towards her. In my work, I have to retrain her exactly as much as I have to retrain him to correct this situation.

I’m sorry Dr McLaren, but you have to “retrain her”? It sounds like you’re talking about a dog and not a traumatized woman who has been, or currently is being, abused by her partner.

It happens like this. Early on in the relationship he becomes aggravated for some reason and raises his voice at her. She tolerates it, lets it go by, thinks to herself “he’s not too angry – no need to rock the boat”. At that stage he is at 4/10 in his level of anger. By not objecting she has just trained him that 4/10 is acceptable. So he continues to regularly reach that level.

Then a few weeks or months later something more aggravating happens and he yells at her and swears “you bitch”. He is now at 6/10 in his level of anger. She tolerates it, lets it go by, thinks to herself “that’s not much worse than before – no point in just aggravating him more”. By not objecting, she has just taught him that 6/10 is doable and calling her a “bitch” is OK.

Eventually he escalates further and she fails to object, teaching him at each stage that his level of anger is tolerable and has no consequences. Before you know it, he has reached 9/10 and he is smacking her head into the wall and calling her a “fucking c—“.

Did you just? She “taught” him???

I– I don’t even know what to say. Dr McLaren is seemingly dead set on this “training” analogy. Thing. Mess. It’s a mess. She’s speaking like the abusive man is a misbehaving dog and the abused woman is an irresponsible owner giving positive reinforcement for bad behavior. She’s speaking like she views herself as an obedience trainer who has to teach the owner how to properly train her dog while also correcting the dog’s bad behavior. Unfortunately for her, abusive relationships don’t work that way.

It’s been shown in studies that attempting to leave an abuse relationship is the most dangerous time for the victim. How do you think he’d act if she attempted to show resistance to his abuse? Do you honestly believe he’s just gonna apologize for the emotional and/or physical abuse if she just gives a very firm no? Or do you think he’s gonna view her resistance as a challenge to his authority and lash out at her? Option one may be what happens in Fantasy Land, but over here in reality, option two is much more likely.

You would think someone would have clued her into this at some point while she was going for her degree. Even if they didn’t, all of this information is available for free across all of the Internets and the libraries everywhere. Hell, she probably could have just asked a colleague and they would have gently corrected her. Instead of doing the tiniest bit of research though, she simply took her amazingly toxic views to the public forum.

Her view that women simply need to be more assertive if they want domestic violence to end is extremely dangerous and part of the problem. What she is essentially saying is, the women who are in abusive relationships deserve the abuse and it’s their fault they’re in them. This truly toxic belief is why so many people incorrectly assume they will never be in an abusive relationship. This belief is why so many people think abuse victims are simply weak and didn’t try hard enough to get it to stop. This is the kind of (for lack of a better term) bullshit Dr McLaren is spreading to her patients. That terrifies me. This woman actually sees patients. People, women, are going to her for help and they are being met with “you should be more assertive.” How much damage has this woman done?

It’s time for us all to have “The Talk”.

In light of recent journalistic failures, I deemed it necessary to have “the talk” with twitter about the safety and privacy of survivors. Below is a slightly modified version of the talk I had with twitter earlier today. [TW: Mention of rape]

Booty Babe Art and the Fetishization of Black Women

The more time I spend on twitter, the more I realize that it’s really hard to talk about some issues with only 140 characters per post. It’s a really good platform for broad statements and over-arcing themes, but when the topic gets really nuanced and specific it’s easy to miss context. It’s also really easy for your distaste at a situation to get misconstrued. That happened to me today when I stumbled upon the kickstarter for Booty Babe Art.

At first, I wasn’t too bothered by the dolls themselves. Bigger Black women looking like sexy pin-ups? I’m so here for that. I absolutely love the idea of more diverse body types being seen in art and media. However, when I got a look at exactly who was making these dolls I had to pause for a second.

Everybody, meet Spencer Davis. He’s the artist behind Booty Babe Art. He’s been making these dolls since 1998 and came to kickstarter so he could get funding to make a line of five new dolls. According to the bio on his website, one of his influences is Black Tail Magazine. He uses the dolls to express “his passion for toy collecting, foreign culture, female beauty, fantasy and low brow art.” After taking in the context, I couldn’t help but feel quite a bit differently about the dolls. Suddenly images like these didn’t look so innocent or empowering anymore.

Now, let’s get one thing straight before we continue. I don’t have an issue with sex or sexual imagery on it’s own. If you just browse my twitter timeline from last night you’d instantly know that. What I’m bothered by here is the words of the creator, the creator himself, and the image that he is producing.

In my humble opinion, this feels a lot like fetishization and objectification. From his words both on his website and in the kickstarter video, it feels like he’s doing this simply to fulfill a fetish for himself and not because he wants to see big Black women represented in art and media. That makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

If a Black woman had made these dolls because she wanted to see women who looked her represented and looking sexy, I wouldn’t have an issue. I’d probably pull out my wallet and donate what I could to the kickstarter and signal boost the hell out of it. Positive representation for Black women, especially fat/curvy Black women, is distinctly lacking and we do need more of it.

This campaign doesn’t feel like to me. It feels like a white man using Black women as both a fetish and a source of income. That’s not ok to me. I won’t be supporting this campaign and honestly it makes me feel really uncomfortable.

If you don’t see a problem with it, that’s fine and dandy. Feel free to give him all the money in your wallet. I’m going to stay far away from it though because it does’t feel right to me.

“Comparison leads to violence.”

I was listening to the last hour of the last Hip Hop is for Lovers podcast of the year when one of the hosts (@Beautybyuche on twitter) said that phrase. She talked about how much it touched her when she first heard it and I couldn’t help but have the same reaction. It touched a part of me that I honestly thought I had dealt with and put behind me long ago. Turns out, I was very wrong.

I have spent my whole life comparing myself to other people. My brother, my classmates, my friends, the people on television, everyone. If I wasn’t the “best” it wasn’t good enough. If I’m being completely honest, it’s something that I find myself still doing. Here I am, married, financially stable(ish), and mom to a beautiful 3yr old but it’s still not “good enough”. I compare myself to other people my age and I view myself as a failure. Since I’m not in school, I don’t have a degree, and I’m definitely not going for a Ph.D., I think my life is a failure.

Comparing myself to others is drastically unhealthy and I know I shouldn’t do it but I do it anyway. That constant comparison has brought me nothing but depression, mental anguish, and more fear than one person should deal with on a daily basis. There are things that I want to do, that I love to do, but I’m too scared to do them because I’m afraid I won’t be the “best” at it.

The one question I’m currently asking myself is “why”. Why do I think I need that degree to be successful? Why do I think I have to be the “best” in order to do something? Why can’t I just be myself and be ok with that? Why do I feel the need to emulate the lives of others?

I don’t have a degree and I’ll probably never get one and that’s ok. I’m not the best writer in the world and that’s just fine. I didn’t have the best or easiest life, but you know what? That life lead me to where I am now. That life gave me one hell of a unique perspective on life in general. I shouldn’t take that for granted. So you know what? I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to stop the violence against myself and refrain from comparing myself to others. It won’t be easy and I may slip up from time to time, but I will stop. I want  2014 to be a fresh start for me. Hopefully this small step can help me do just that.

Humbleness, Humility, and Their Racial Connotations

I have issues with people’s obsession with humbleness and humility. Nine times out of ten people only talk about those traits when discussing PoC & even then what they really mean is something different. What people really mean is they want you to be submissive and self deprecating to the point of developing self esteem issues.

I also know damn well I’m not the only one who’s noticed that those terms only seem to come out as insults when talking about confident PoC.

When Beyoncé made Bow Down, how many people came out the woodwork to say they though she was “arrogant”?

How many people say the same thing of Nicki Minaj? Folks say she’s “full of herself” and they want to “take her down a notch” all the time.

How many discussions center around the fact that people hate rappers bragging about what they have while ignoring context for why they are?

How many people straight up hate Kanye without even taking the time to really look at his actions or look at his backstory?

People talk shit about Rihanna day in and day out about how they hate her cockiness.

On the flip side of that, how many people (some of the same people) praise white celebrities for their confidence? It’s been talked about before, but look at how obsessed people are with Robert Downey Jr. There’s a whole meme on tumblr about how people can’t tell the difference between Robert Downey Jr. and Tony Stark and people fucking love it. I’m being dead ass serious when I say I’ve never seen anyone, especially anyone in the media, say that Robert Downey Jr.  needs to be more “humble.”

Why is cockiness acceptable from Robert Downey Jr. but not from Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Kanye, Rihanna, or any rapper ever? That question is largely rhetorical because I’m sure we all know the answer to that.

I’m not gonna make any friends saying this, but I really feel like it’s a subconscious form of racism. It’s so subtle that I see that type of speech/thought coming from PoC (Black people in particular) just as much as white folks.

This is one of those times where I’m kinda left questioning myself. I’ve seen it so many times though that I’ve detected a definite pattern and I’m pretty damn sure I’m right.

UPDATE: 9/28/2013

Based on the reaction I got for making this simple observation, I’m now 100% positive I’m right. I had Black men in my mentions telling me I should be more concerned about Black men choosing to date white women or claiming that I was “defending Jay-Z’s white gaze.” Along with that kind of nonsense though, I got a flood of people telling me that they’ve noticed the same thing. The very strong reactions from people on both sides of this issue tells me that there is definitely something here. If we’re gonna make any process on the anti-racist front, this is definitely a topic worth exploring in depth.

Totally Biased: Kamau Speaks with Tim Wise (Extended Interview)

One thing Tim said in this interview stuck out to me in particular:

“If you don’t like white allyship in general, that’s a problem. If you don’t like the fact that every now and then, those of us who are trying to be allies screw up, then you’re not really prepared for this work because that’s what people do. They make mistakes, they screw up, they don’t treat each other very kindly. We’ve got a lot bigger fish to fry than to sit and fight amongst each other about who has the best and most responsible Facebook page or the most responsible and respectful twitter feed. The history of white allyship is way too important for me or anyone else to sort of walk away from it because we get beef with somebody.”

What the holy shit is that?! He just insinuated that if we don’t like white allies, we shouldn’t be doing anti-racist work. He just insinuated that if we don’t like the fact that white allies constantly fuck up, we’re not “ready” for this. He just insinuated that the criticism that white allies (namely himself) gets is based around Facebook pages and twitter feeds.

This is the man that people herald as some type of “savior” to the anti-racism movement! This man just went on national television and tone policed a massive swath of the movement, dismissed his most vocal critics (who just so happen to be WoC) as “trolls,” downplayed everything he’s done up to that point, and spewed out some of the most hypocritical statements I have ever heard come out of a human mouth. While he did this, Kamau sat there and ate that mess up like it was a three course meal from a five star restaurant.

In my very humble opinion, it is way past time for people to stop being lulled into a false sense of security by Tim Wise’s words and actually listen to what this fool is telling you. He’s shown us time and time again that he is no “ally” in the true sense of the word. What he’s telling us is that he is an attention loving white man who thinks that white “allies” like him are, and should be, front and center in the anti-racism movement. He thinks that white “allies” are so damn important that if you don’t like them or you have questions/comments about them, you need to get the hell out the movement. He does go on to say that white allies shouldn’t look at this as “missionary work,” and I do believe that he does think that’s true. He doesn’t look at this as “missionary work” at all. No! He’s here to get his name in the news and make some good ass money while he’s at it.

“Black children have no value in the eyes of White America.”

That was a phrase I wrote about six months ago that garnered a lot of controversy. People rushed to tell me how wrong I was. Countless amounts of people told me I was exaggerating, I was making things up, and that I was the racist one for pointing this out. However, that statement is one that I still stand behind to this day because it still holds true.

Just this morning there was a story about a white Dallas man who shot an 8 year old black child in the face while he was playing tag outside his apartment complex. This story isn’t an outlier unfortunately. There are so many stories of white people deeming Black children a threat or nuisance and either assaulting or killing them.

However, every time something like this happens, it get dismissed as an “isolated incident.” We get told over and over that it was just one person doing something horrible and there’s no pattern involved. When we try to point out that things like this have happened before, and the continued dehumanization of Black children in the media contributes to it, we’re told that we are “imagining things.” Meanwhile, the media tries to understand and humanize the killer while demonizing the victim. The most famous example of this to date is the Trayvon Martin case.

Anyone who paid even the slightest bit of attention couldn’t help but notice the character assassination carried out by the media and society at large on Trayvon, and later Rachel Jeantel. People were quick to brand him a thug, gang member, and threat to George Zimmerman. Lies were spread about how stole from the convenience store he went to and how he was armed when he confronted Zimmerman. Pictures were spread on the internet of “Trayvon” wearing a grill and with tattoos, but it was soon proven those pictures weren’t even of him.

Rachel Jeantel, a woman who speaks three languages better than I can speak one, was called ghetto, combative, and uneducated. People, both Black and white, made fun of her weight, her hair, the way she spoke, and her skin tone. Society was ready to assume so many things about Trayvon and Rachael simply because they were Black teenagers. Even though all those assumptions were proven false they still persist to this day.

Things like this happen on a daily basis, both on the national scale and in our day to day lives. So six months after I first said it, that statement still rings true. In some ways, I feel the need to expand it. Black children, Black teenagers, and even Black adults have no value in the eyes of White America. We are, at best, an inconvenience and at worst an outright threat to their way of life.

Related articles

• Gun Violence Leading Cause of Death of Black Children (newamericamedia.org)
• What The Zimmerman Verdict Tells Blacks In America: Black Children Are Not Children (mintpressnews.com)
• Black Adults Need to Stop Spewing Anti-Black Rhetoric to Children (theroot.com)
• Under the radar epidemic: Young children caught in the crossfire of gun violence (thegrio.com)

My problem with the #femfuture retreat

My issue with the #femfuture retreat is the partly the fact they made it barely accessible to people and partly the messed up history of #femfuture itself.

Yes, they are offering a travel scholarship, but it’s only up to $500. If you live a significant distance away from New York, $500 isn’t going to cover a one way plane ticket, let alone a round trip one.

Yes, they are offering childcare for potty trained kids between the ages of 4 and 12, but what about the parents who have kids not in those categories. They say they’ll help you find local childcare, but will it be free? If not, who will have to pay for it? What if the parent finds childcare but can’t afford it? Are they then stuck in Rhinebeck, NY with their child and not able to attend the retreat?

Then there’s the whole selection committee. You can submit your application, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll be selected to attend. They say they’re doing this to create a “safe space,” but we know from past experience that the “safe spaces” #femfuture and their handlers create excludes Women of Color. Not only have they known to exclude Women of Color, they have also actively denigrated us. So my question is, will any Women of Color be selected to attend? If they are, how will they be treated? We have seen in the past that WoC who have dared to criticize #femfuture and it’s handlers have been treated with dismissal and disrespect. Will the same happen at that retreat? If they do pick two or three WoC to attend out of the 20, will they even feel comfortable speaking up?

The whole thing just feels like the same old gatekeeping of feminism just packaged in a different container.

Twitter Rant of the Day: Unpaid Internships and Underpaying Jobs

Unpaid internships (and any type of unpaid work) really do need to be destroyed. You expect people to work for you, do the things you don’t want to do, spend their energy and time, completely for free?

You tell these people it’s for “exposure,” “experience,” or “for a good cause” like that’s gonna pay their rent. Y’all do realize folks have bills to pay, right? You do realize folks have to eat, right? It’s not like the ppl you want to take these unpaid internships can just get a second paying job. Not with the hours you want them to put in. You expect someone to work for you from dawn to dusk, and sometimes later, but you don’t want to pay them. How is that fair? And the people/companies asking for unpaid interns know good and fucking well they have enough money to pay them! You up here making hundreds of millions of dollars a year but don’t want to pay your interns? That’s bullshit!

If you want people to work for you, to spend their time and energy, compensate them appropriately! The apartment complex won’t take “experience” as a rent payment. The government won’t take “exposure” as student loan payment.

This goes for more than just unpaid internships too. This goes for folks who run websites  and blogs looking for writers too. You expect people to write about the most painful and personal things and do it for free. Then, when they (rightly) turn you down, you simply troll their tumblr, twitter, and wordpress accounts for what you want and use it without their consent. Or you ask for interviews saying their words will be used one way and then do something completely different, betraying their trust. Or, if you just don’t feel like asking at all, you steal their words and try to pass it off as your own on your blog/website. Then, after you’ve been called out for doing the fucked up shit you did, you try (and sometimes succeed) to paint yourself as the victim. That shit is not right and we definitely see you.

Hell, even the jobs tha do “pay” don’t nearly pay enough. The last job I had payed $7.55/hr. I easily should have been making at least $10-12/hr (if not more) for the type of work they had me doing though. I was only a sales associate but they had me setting prices, doing inventory, resetting parts of the store, training new hires, setting up displays, unloading & setting out new merchandise, working the cash register, doing returns and layaways, and so much more. When the people from the corporate headquarters in Chicago came to visit, they made sure to schedule me in because I was one of the only people who knew what the fuck they were doing.

I had my hands on damn near everything in that store. There were times where I quite literally did my manager’s job. I did all that work but was only getting $7.55/hr and they made sure my Black ass did not get full time hours, let alone overtime. There were times I looked at my schedule and I’d have 38.9 or 39 hours. If it looked like I might go over, they made me go home.

Before this argument comes up, there’s no way in hell I could’ve gotten another job. They way they scheduled me made that impossible. Add to that, I didn’t have a car so I’d have to rely on a city bus to get me from one job to another & back home. That was just not feasible.

So I was stuck at a job, making $7.55/hr, part time (which meant during the holidays I’d get around 35hrs/week but any other time of the year I’d only get 15-20hrs/week), with little to no chance to advance and after a year there I was looking at a 5 cent raise. No, you did not read that wrong, the oh-so-generous yearly raise was FIVE CENTS. One whole nickel. Oh, and those times I only got 15-20hrs, they’d routinely call on my days off to have me come in. If you said no, you’d basically be telling them to fire you. To put the cherry on the cake, I was actually doing better than a lot of the people I knew. Minimum wage at that time was $6.50/hr. I was making $1.05 more than most folks. Let that sink in for a minute.

So tell me, how the fuck is anyone supposed to live like that??? How? I’m just really fucking fed up with the state of affairs in the US work environment right now. People expect folks to work their asses off FOR FREE in unpaid internships that may or may not get them a job in the field they spent tens of thousands of dollars they didn’t have to get a degree in, or they expect you to work your ass off for a few dollars and change per hour, while getting shit on constantly by customers and other folks who simultaneously think they own you and their better than you because they have the office job or they’re in school, while you take it with a smile. If you don’t you’ll lose this shit ass job that barely fucking covers your bills and leaves you enough for food.

How is that living? That’s not even surviving. It’s just existing and I’ve been there for years and I don’t want to fucking go back there but I have to because once again I’m left with no fucking choice. And please, do not get me started on the jobs/people who don’t take you seriously if you don’t have a very expensive piece of paper from the “right” college or university. I’d be here all night and my blood pressure would be through the roof.

Related articles

• Unpaid internships must be destroyed (via Matt Bors) (brightoninternetmarketing.wordpress.com)
• Nick Clegg rejects call for ban on unpaid internship adverts (theguardian.com)
• Brendan O’Neill is wrong on unpaid internships (blogs.spectator.co.uk)