Advice: Leaving Internship Week One?

[amandermott]

I'm an advanced standing social work graduate student, with a family. My daughter is eight years old with high functioning Autism and some emotional issues and I'm commuting to NYC from NJ for both school and internship. I also have some mental health and other disabilities I've dealt with most of my life, which is why I chose my school and my career field. My concentration in school is policy in contemporary social issues.  I was lucky enough even after almost 10 years not working to be offered a handful of interview to go on two, be offered both, and take one at a prestigious research academy.  Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20, and I'm realizing that my choice was based mostly on prestige and how great it would look on my resume post graduation.  The work itself seems a bit too ambiguous, and because of the type of organization it is, and the department I'll be working in its more separate from population contact than I would like.  It's pretty much completely research based with a lot of project variation.  I've immediately felt that I wouldn't connect with the staff the department who are all really nice people which makes things even more difficult. I find it harder to say I might have trouble working with nice people because that just sounds terrible, but in reality, I feel a totally lack of connection, greater than first week nerves that I don't forsee ever coming to fruition. The next issue is my commute. It's location in the city makes my commute awful because of its abscence of good subway access making my 7 hours of interning into a nearly 12 hour day.  A few of these things may be managable to me, but not all of them on top of each other; then on my second day the icing on my cake came.  I was told that the dress code was business casual with a more casual leaning prior to starting.  For my first day however I wanted to dress to impress, I wore a nice floral dress, below the kneee length, it wasn't high cut, but wasn't low cut either, and I added a nice blazer to compensate for the fact that it was sleeveless and that I had somewhat large breasts; which can make a some cuts seem lower than they are.  I asked the opinions of others before walking out of the house and felt proud and professional. The first day I was taken on an orientation tour and introduced to every department head, including the president.  Between my first and second day I received an email from HR asking if I could stop in at 10:30 when I came the following day, I assumed it was to pick up my ID.  I arrived at 8:30am the next day, after missing two trains and walking a mile from the subway, and fixing my computer to another email asking if I could come sooner.  When I arrived, I was asked to sit.  The casual nature of the dress code was again explained, and then I was told that the president was "offended by my breasts" when she saw me. What I was currently wearing was fine, but keep it covered because she (the president) "found my attire really offensive."  I've been sexually harassed by men in the work place, I've been cat called, I've been a lot of things, but I have never been so insulted in my life.  I was so shocked I could barely react and when through the day just trying not to cry and thinking of ways I could never show my face there again.  I emailed my field placement person at my school, who I think seemed sympathetic and possibly wasn't once I told her I had yet to say anything to my task supervisor at the internship.  I honestly don't know what to do, I feel like I can't do this internship, and the whole thing makes me question even attending grad school.  I also don't know how to even bridge the conversation with my agency task supervisor.  Any advice, feedback, etc would be appreciated.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

Here's an obvious question: what would you do instead, if you left your internship?

[amandermott]

I would try and get another one, the way I look at it is if it were a job I'd quit, and I'm paying the school $6075 to work there so I feel like they should work with me to find a different placement.

[fuzzylogician]

If you can find another internship, that seems to me like a good solution. I suppose you wouldn't want to switch more than once (if you can help it), but leaving a place for reasons of 'incompatibility' or some such would probably not raise too many red flags if you are successful at the next internship. I'd definitely look into that before choosing to leave the program and give up altogether.