Krishnan offloads about how he’s at risk of turning into a full-time blogger for lack of anything to do in Nike’s Finance division in Hilversum, the Netherlands.
“It’s been a little over two weeks since I started my internship,” writes Krishnan, who is set to graduate from RSM’s MBA program at the end of the year. “I finished my morning cup of tea, read the two mails (official) I received and then what? I decided to write a blog.
“If you are wondering how come I have been writing so often, no prizes for guessing… Yup, I am idle for most of the time. I had literally no work for the last two days.”
Krishnan goes on to say that he has cultivated “the bad habit of drinking too many cups of coffee, tea and chocolate to keep myself occupied.”
It seems that Nike’s Finance people are exceptionally dedicated to their work: “I have mixed feelings about the work environment,” continues Krishnan. “People around me seem to be pretty occupied… with their heads firmly stuck into their computers. The interaction between people is minimal.”
Krishnan first attributed the funereal atmosphere to the pressure to close the books for the quarter. But, he observes, “The trend seems to continue even after the closure of books."
“Agreed, finance could be tough because of the number crunching and the constant pressure to stick to timelines,” he continues, “but having been (in) finance for 13 years and worked in India, the UK, Brazil and Mexico, I find the environment a little strange.” It could, he adds, be because of a recent restructuring in which colleagues lost their jobs.
He dwells on his co-workers for only a short time before moving on to the merits of internships, period. In a post titled “Summer internship: a boon or a bane?”, Krishnan, who is (in theory) working on accounting and compliance projects at Nike, argues that internships are unlikely to meet expectations:
“In general it is not easy to get a role that would fit your experience and knowledge and also excite you for the summer. The company’s requirements and the student’s requirements do not always match. And this summer this has been quite evident.”
The summer internship has been scrapped as a mandatory part of RSM’s MBA program this year. “I personally am not fascinated by the summer internship requirement,” he writes. “I was in fact very happy when the school announced that they have scrapped the requirement from the coming year.”
Krishnan hints that he aspires to bigger things than accounting and compliance, but that he couldn’t find work in another function because that’s where he has most experience. Plus Krishnan, who brought his wife and two-year-old daughter with him to the Netherlands, needs the cash.
But the lack of mental stimulation seems to be extracting its own price, as he works himself into a lather of self-doubt: “The two weeks has already made me reflect upon my decision. Was it a right decision? What if there were more opportunities? Does brand really matter? Should I have ignored all advice of brand making a difference? What if I was not short of the much needed $$$?”
It’s hard not to sympathize with him even though, as he admits, he’s one of the lucky few to have an internship at all.
“I hope things would change soon as I have got ten more weeks to go. My eyes get strained if I read a lot of articles on the comp (sic), and I need to find some alternatives.
“Getting in shape through workouts could be a good option,” he adds, “But, now its time for another cup of tea.”
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