Advice to unpaid interns: you’re being exploited and won’t get a job

Originally posted on Quartz:

I am the queen of unpaid internships.

My tasks have been of both the tedious and substantive sort. In Paris, where I went to college and interned at a US diplomatic mission, I cheerfully called up numerous French organizations to secure enough attendees for an event featuring Hillary Clinton. In Israel, I spent hours googling funding opportunities for an Arab women’s NGO. In The Hague, I wrote legal briefs, translated, and researched for the prosecutor of an international criminal tribunal created by the United Nations.

But I was not paid.

So one day, I quit. Nearly three months into my internship (because one must commit to at least three months, full time, when applying to this particular tribunal), I say I can no longer afford to work for free. My supervisor barely bats an eye: another batch of interns is flying over in a few days anyway.

This madness started in my junior…

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