What I wish was different
TLDR:
-Job listing is misleading
-Middle management is overworked/underpaid, upper management can be exploitative
-Horrific communication/organization
-Virtually zero support/resources for interns
Many interns joined under the pretense of being able to work an actual IT / tech support internship with the occasional teaching role, but most of us were instructors at best and glorified babysitters at worst. One of their locations had a 19 year old intern working as Assistant Director because one of the Directors called out. This wasn't limited to one instance and happened multiple times throughout the summer. The intern was told that they needed them to fill the role but that they would still only be paid base intern wages for it.
In addition, for the first week of work, each intern only received a 10 minute break per day, as opposed to the standard 30. We were chastised for taking any longer than 10 minutes.
Halfway through the summer, a bunch of people quit because the work doesn't match the job description or because the exhaustion that comes with the work isn't worth the pay. From then on, they're constantly understaffed, and there's a 50/50 chance that if you originally had the week off or originally were supposed to go help out at the office for the week as a break from the camp, you're going to get called to either fill in as an instructor or get moved around to do something at a different site with little to no warning.
Often times, vital information was not communicated to interns until the last second. This led to people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, parents of campers getting aggressive, and other equally avoidable situations. Even work schedules and site rosters often weren't communicated properly and had to be forwarded via email from one intern to another sometimes.
You're told at the start of the summer that if you just follow the curriculum to teach the students, you'll be fine. This is objectively false. Many courses have unfinished curriculum, others have missing documents, a bunch are outdated, and some are just straight up dysfunctional (requires the usage of a paid software that the company didn't pay for). There is no "Curriculum Team" either. It seems like most of it is just other interns cobbling things together as necessary.
