A few weeks ago while on spring break I checked my e-mail. Expecting to just clear out some junk before it got out of hand, I was surprised to see an e-mail from someone named Dallas Dymes and the name of my last internship as the subject. I opened it and was two paragraphs in before I figured out that this kid goes to my school and wants me to help him get an internship at this specific company. I wanted to write back one simple question, "How the hell did you get my e-mail??" I decided to be a little nicer that that--I was once a sophomore, desperate for an internship in Hip-Hop and surrounded by professors and advisors who had no contacts to help me. I told him more about what I did on the internship, asked him where he'd been applying, and told him to try googling things like "music internship" or to add "hip-hop" to it. I really thought that would be that and I'd be done with it. I don't even know this guy and I don't remember signing up for any program to be this kid's mentor. Not that I'd mind, but really....how the hell did he get my e-mail?
He revealed to me in his next correspondence that he'd gotten my name from my advisor. Maybe she should have e-mailed me and told me he would be contacting me, I think that would have been nice. Dallas asked me a ton of questions, he seemed really eager to get his feet wet in the industry and who can be mad at that? He also made it clear that tips on HOW to find the internship weren't enough, he wanted me to GIVE him names and numbers of people that worked at this company. I think he wanted it delivered on a silver platter if I'm not mistaken, maybe garnished with a fresh flower or two.
I love helping other students find their place in the industry. I'm still looking for mine and am forever indebted to an old friend who happened to know someone at what later became my first internship. However, I still had to call this place, set up my own interview, interview, read a book, and write an essay before I was offered the internship. All I was given was a phone number (which I later found out was pretty easy to find online) and the name of my friend (no one know who he was anyway so it didn't even help like I thought it would). I'm all for making myself accessible to other students at my school that have the same interests I do, because we are few and far between. I speak on internship panels, I work with my bosses and advisor to get the companies I intern at added to the database for other people to work at, and I give detailed reviews on how it was to work for that company. What I don't want to do is give someone a hand-out.
Dallas suggested we meet up on campus so that he could ask all his question because the e-mails were "taking too long". I agreed, I didn't really want to recommend someone to my past internship whom I'd never met. So I wrote him back and told him when I was on campus, and he never responded. I have a sneaking suspicion that Dallas got too tired of waiting for me to give him this contact info, that he'd realized I wasn't going to give it away that easily and he didn't want to put in the work. And by work, I mean meet up with me somewhere on campus (he has to be on campus to go to class, doesn't he) and talk with me for a few minutes, per his suggestion!
You can pretty much say he threw that one away because I know that company was looking for interns, and even though I found that one by googling what I'd suggested he google, I would have helped him. His constant hinting, and eventual outright asking, for a specific name and phone number should have tipped me off in the first place but his lack of effort was the end of it.
Don't ever throw something so easy away!
UPDATE: Dallas just e-mailed me, after not responding over a month ago, asking me for a "hook up" at my last internship. DO NOT DO THIS!!!
Part II tomorrow...
