RAPID RESPONSES
Empowered intern
I support Rob Killick’s article [Why unpaid internships are a good thing, yesterday]. I began my career as an unpaid intern – hailing from precisely the kind of low income, disadvantaged background that is invoked to argue for closing down these opportunities. I worked a low paid (but flexible) job alongside these placements and became unfashionably thrifty in order to make ends meet, consoling myself with the thought that nothing worth doing is ever easy and that the prize would be all the sweeter for not having been handed to me on a plate. My experiences suggest that unpaid internships actually level the playing field as they offer talented but unconnected outsiders a chance to make an impression and break the cycle of nepotism that prevails for new entrants in some industries.
Daniel Cormack
Actaeon Films