Nothing more would please me than reporting the past few weeks of interning contained a whirlwind of exciting tasks and assignments; however, it is simply not the case.

My internship at the Scottish Parliament, while still ranking high among my best life decisions, holds many moments where I find myself sitting and twiddling my thumbs. The daily routine of administrative duties only occupies so much of my eight hour work span, and with my supervisor lost in her own tasks often forgetting my existence, I am left to search the world wide web and attempt to fill my day. I try to take initiative, asking for assignments and volunteering to do anything which may be useful, yet the combination of my excellent and efficient worth ethic and a mere lack of things to do results in a whole lot of nothing most of the time.

Again: I truly love this internship.

The next weeks do show promise of an increase in tasks for me to do. For one, my office grew and is now home to not just one but three interns: Stuart and John. When I first heard that more interns would be trickling into the office, I immediately disliked the notion, and for quite selfish reasons. I wanted to be the sole intern, and prove most impressive. However, my mind quickly changed its mind upon meeting the first intern, Stuart. Stuart is quite possibly the cheeriest person I have ever met. The other interns in our program comment on our interactions as slightly terrifying, as it is as if positivity and happiness is hitting you in the face. While I do not view this as a negative quality, like my morbid fellow interns do, I agree with their claims: Stuart and I are, in fact, very alike. Having company in the office is quite nice, and helps pass the day. Even more than that, I sense a budding friendship. The other intern, John, has yet to appear in the office for longer than our very brief initial meeting. He seems nice enough, but only time will tell. With his start date of Monday, I will learn his true colours soon enough. Although I am not worried; Stuart and I will surely drown him in themes of friendship.

In addition to my growing “happy family” of an office, I also had a wee sit down with my supervisor, Eva. After chatting a bit on how I thought the internship was progressing, in which I of course relayed all positive information, she revealed that I may soon get to work on a research project and asked if I had any particular area of interest. Being the ambitious person that I am, I knew I wanted to do something actually useful to my MSP, Rhoda Grant, so as to prove my competence; I confessed I wouldn’t mind looking into issues of women’s equalities. Now, some of you may be thinking, “Myriah how is that being strategic? You like that topic anyway.” This is true. However, so does Rhoda. I could very easily have done a project on something easy, and something perhaps I may even like more, such as multiculturalism or Scottish folk tales (which yes, I could actually have gotten permission to do). Offering myself to work on issues of women’s equalities not only allows me to dig deeper into an issue that is of interest to me, but also help further along the work of my MSP: truly a win-win situation. Hence, I look forward greatly to beginning that project in the next few weeks.

Finally, things may pick up as David is back! For anyone not aware, my internship consists of a unique situation where I get to intern for two MSPs: Rhoda Grant and David Stewart. However, until yesterday David remained home in Inverness ill. For a while, I almost convinced myself I would never meet him; that David was merely a myth. With David’s return, I have an inkling that more work will soon flow my way, as he has weeks of Parliamentary business to catch up on.

Thus, the internship does hold a promise of transforming into something a wee bit more exciting. Perhaps my initial pessimistic tone was undeserving, as the more I talk about it, the stronger my enthusiasm about everything going on grows. Yet, as this is a travel oriented blog, posts containing tales of journeys will soon flood this webpage. Beginning on Monday is the Parliamentary recess, and while I do unfortunately have to work for the first few days, beginning October 15^th I leave Edinburgh for a week and a half of travelling; London to Berlin to Düsseldorf to Goch: this travelsmith once again justifies her name.

Cheers,

The Travelsmith