The summer internship. You’ve worked your ass off trying to get it, sending in resumes, cold calling, spending hours in your school’s career office…and now you’re about to start. Nervous? Feeling strangely and suddenly unqualified? Packing to move to another place? This second installment of Summer Do’s and Don’ts tackles the sometimes fun, sometimes insane, experience of working for little to no pay.

• Do be prepared to know nothing initially. As Miss Control Freak USA, I hate being clueless, but it’s usually the case with internships. You’re hitting the ground running, being expected to learn everything in a day or so, but you can’t know it until someone tells you. Allow yourself to sit back and acknowledge the fact that everyone has first days, and no one is very good at them.

• Don’t get discouraged during your first week. Well, I mean, you can, but don’t let that discouragement psyche you out. Things will get better and become more familiar the longer you stay and the more open you are to putting in good work. Everyone has first days, and everyone also has first weeks. You’re not the only one who’s eaten alone on day three by the fountain in the middle of Madison Square Park, fighting off pigeons and some weird three-year-old kid who won’t stop talking about sharks.

• Do work as hard as possible. If you can, put in extra hours, take on extra projects, get to know your boss. In most situations, hard work does not go unnoticed, and it’s common practice for businesses to hire interns. Make sure they remember your name—in a good way.

• Don’t do more work than you feel is right. Yes, take on extra challenges and show your eagerness, but if your boss starts asking you to wax his floor and give his sick cat antibiotic shots, it may be a case of employers taking your free labor for granted. Be eager, but keep your pride. A lot of people I know would clean a boss’s toilet with their tongue if they thought it would get them somewhere, but I’ve never been under the impression that being someone’s slave is going to get anything except a high class slave position. As soon as people see you’re willing to run to Timbuktu and back in high heels for them, they’ll get into the habit of asking you to do it all the time. Trust me, there are other ways to be ambitious and get to the top.

• Do find ways to talk to other interns. It can hard at first to make friendships, but it helps the day go by faster and also allows you to build contacts in your area of expertise. Besides, chances are you’re not the only one stressed out and eating alone (they’ve just found another place to eat besides the fountain with the shark kid).

• Do remember why you’re there. First and foremost, to get experience in an occupational area you’re seriously considering post-college. Have fun, go out, meet new people, but try to not to jeopardize your standing. Stay away from office politics. More often than not, it’s just bored people trying to find a new face to hear their side of an old argument.

• Do show them that you’d be an awesome person to hire…should they ever need to hire someone in the future.

• Don’t forget to follow up the internship with an email or letter of thanks. Let the company know that you appreciated the experience and would love to continue with them in the future.

• Don’t stay in an internship that doesn’t make you happy. You know when something doesn’t feel right, why waste your time in a place that sucks? If you feel like you’re being treated unfairly, or not receiving the kind of experience you want, just leave. I cut my first internship short because I didn’t feel like answering other people’s email and filing random scraps of paper for 6 hours a day for no money. I wasn’t learning anything, except how to hate self-absorbed idiots who never bothered to find out my name and stepped over my head as I painfully bent over metal filing cabinets.

• Do feel proud of yourself. Interning is never an easy thing, and a lot of people are too lazy to even be bothered. It’s guaranteed to help you out in the long run, and gives you built in experience during the always terrifying but always necessary post-graduation job search.