Claire. Claire. Listen to me Claire, just listen. This is a good opportunity Claire, not a lot of people would be able to get this experience. Think of all of the things you could do with this experience, such as telling other people about your experience. Don’t you like conversations, Claire? Don’t you appreciate the human need for interaction? This is a good opportunity, Claire, and there are dozens of other young people who would love to be offered this internship.

The great thing about interning with us is that, well, yes, the experience. Haven’t you ever played Pokemon, Claire? You have got to train your Pokemon, you’ve got to get them experience. This is you, evolving from a Pidgey into a Pidgeotto. But first you need that experience. You can’t expect to live your life successfully as a Pidgey because there are just so many Pidgeys. You walk into every fucking field and there’s another Pidgey, all of them the same. But you only need one Pidgey, Claire, that one special Pidgey that just happened to be in the right time at the right place for you to knock it unconscious and- well this metaphor is getting away from me, Claire, but I see Pidgeotto in you.

Think of it this way, Claire, you’ve got to pay your dues. You can’t just expect to win an intergalactic basketball game without proper training, Claire. You gotta call in Michael Jordan, and this fax machine here, that’s your Michael Jordan. Do you just think you can use a magic basketball to suck out Charles Barkley’s skills and use them to defeat the Looney Toons? No, that didn’t work for the cigar smoking dude, and that’s certainly not going to work for you. What do you mean you haven’t seen Space Jam?

Okay, let’s try something else. Taking this internship will set you apart from the others because you’ll already have been working. See, it’s important to set yourself apart. Why do you think Mandy Moore dyed her hair brown, huh? She didn’t want to be mistaken for just another Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. Sure, they had different singing voices and sure, only one of them was a good dancer and the other was a good singer, and Mandy later found her true calling being the oddball (Short hair! Wow!) in teen movies, but the point is the same. You don’t want to be the blonde here, Claire. Yes I know you’re a blonde. That was a metaphor.

If you’re not prepared for the real world, what do you think is gonna happen to you? You think you can just figure skate your way through the 1994 Winter Olympics without a hitch, but it doesn’t work like that. Some mustachioed man and his goon will pop you in the kneecap, and you’ll be wondering “Why, why, why [didn’t I take that internship?]!”

What do you have on your resume so far, Claire? Nothing? You need to pack things onto it, Claire, you need to make it more impressive. You wanna dance for a living? You gotta start in the exotic capacity first, if you know what I mean. Maybe weld on the side. Just pack in everything you can, you can’t be afraid to get wet. Let go of the whole bucket, just douse yourself in experience. “What a feeling!” That’s what you’ll be saying to yourself.

You don’t want to pass up a good opportunity, Claire. If you do, you’ll find yourself really regretting it. You’ll see that other people with things that you want, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. This internship, this is your woman. Now, if you don’t take it, one of your ‘sometimes friends’ who you have a lot of passive aggressive feelings about will snatch her up. This isn’t Jessie’s girl, this is your girl. I’m aware there are other internships, but where can you find a woman like this?

Another great thing–and man, I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention it–is that you’ll learn the value of working in a team. I know in college it’s everyone for themselves, but you have to get out of that mindset if you want to really be successful.  What’s the power of one Care Bear? I mean, have you ever seen a single Care Bear get shit done on his own? No, that doesn’t happen, because the Care Bears are a team. They have to lock arms to make rainbows come out of their stomachs, and that’s the way it should be. There’s a lot to be said about working in teams, and every member counts. Even the ones that are sort of insignificant and don’t appear in all the episodes and are mostly there on a trial basis, like the Care Bear Cousins. We’re all family here, really.

The thing is, you can’t jump straight into “regular employment” without having an internship first. That’s flying too close to the sun, I’m afraid. That’s dreaming too big. That’s inventing a teleportation device that eventually causes your gruesome death. You think that you’re some big shot scientist, taking on the world at your own pace, but you’re really nothing more than a fly. Not even a fly, a fly-man hybrid. Either way it’s really gross. Nobody likes a Brundlefly, Claire.

Well Claire, there you have it. As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to take this internship, and I hope you’ll make the right choice. You’re one of the New Kids on the Block, and if you think you can hang tough and learn the moves, you’ll find yourself successful. Like I said earlier Claire, I believe in you. You Got It (The Right Stuff).

What did you say? Oh. This internship is unpaid.