Well, I'm Gonna Be a Blue (I mean, White) Collar Man

I never thought I napping during the day would be something I could let go.  Since my earliest youth, I've been a chronic napper -- my motto: Anywhere, Anytime.  In grade school, a kid didn't even need to pretend.  He could look a teacher square in the eyes and slowly lower his head to his arms, embracing the dark, cool space in the crook of his elbow and the blissful relaxation of a well-earned slumber.  High school was a little more difficult.  Teachers insisted their students be awake for lectures, which pretty much made open time synonomous with nap-time.  College?  That was a revolution.  After three years of being able to tailor my schedule to my napping habits, all my self-discipline evaporated and I began to border addiction. 

Why am I sharing all this?  Today, I hit a personal milestone: not once -- not even once -- did I feel remotely tired.  I have finally adjusted to the 40-hour work week and am a productive member of society.  Also, I wanted an interesting opening to tell you about working at Morningstar.  Hopefully it worked. 

A typical day at Morningstar Madrid is, I would imagine (this is my first internship, after all), identical to that of its US counterpart.  We work from 9 to 6, with an hour interspersed somewhere around 2 o' clock in order to grab a quick lunch.  As of yet, most of my job has revolved around translation: my first task, which took me about a week of full work to complete, was to translate brief summaries of Mexican hedge fund prospectuses from Spanish into English and to enter it into the Morningstar database.  Although it was fairly difficult reading and took a very long time, I walked away with a far sharper Spanish financial vocabulary and a healthy respect for how diverse hedge funds can actually be.  Learning has occurred.  After speaking with the other interns, it seems they are doing similar things, with one translating to Catalan (one of the main, native languages of Spain) and another translating to Portuguese.  

On a whole, I've really enjoyed working at Morningstar so far.  As a very active (read: restless) person both mentally and physically, being behind a desk for long hours can be rather difficult, but the work has been engaging enough where it hasn't been a huge problem.  The day flies by in what seems like no time at all.  Plus, more importantly, my coworkers all seem to be great people.  Everyone has been extremely welcoming and helpful, especially considering that three out of four of the interns don't speak Spanish that well.  It's always heartening, when I begin to feel a little bogged down with work, to pull away from the computer a moment to hear the sounds of Spanish joking that I can't understand.  I say that rather jokingly, but the overall point is true: being surrounded by good, engaging people like I am, is what has made this job awesome so far.