A Week In New York As An Intern On $40 An Hour

Occupation: Software engineering intern and master’s student
Industry: Biotech
Age: 23
Location: New York, NY
Salary: $40 an hour, 40 hours a week.
Joint Income/Financial Setup: I have a partner, M., but we don’t share finances. He does usually treat when we go out, but he’s a PhD student and doesn’t get paid a crazy amount. Hopefully after the PhD ^^
Assets: HYSA: ~$7,000; checking: $1000; 401(k): $20,000.
Debt: $0 — in-state school with a partial merit scholarship. The rest of my college tuition my family very kindly paid.
Paycheck Amount (1x/month): ~$6,000 (I also recently learned biweekly meant twice a month, not twice a week).
Pronouns: She/her

Monthly Expenses

Housing Costs: $2,000. I live with roommates! One is great and the other is tea.
Loan Payments: $0, I don’t have a credit card.
Everything Else: I don’t believe in subscriptions. My company gives me access to premium LLM models, and my parents pay for my phone bill.

Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
My mom heavily encouraged education. My parents told me they’d pay for grad school if it was a good program. I worked in undergrad to pay for living expenses: tutoring, doing research and on summer internship. I recently added up, and realized I made over $50,000 during those four years! Yay! Nowadays I just tutor on the side at $30 an hour, or do internships.

Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent(s) educate you about finances?
Not much, really? Just don’t spend money and try to make more. But they also told me it’s better to live a life you are happy about and make choices that align with your values rather than to follow the money. My mom stopped working for a couple years when I was young to raise me and my siblings, so it was just my dad working for a while. My dad did not make enough to support a family in our HCOL area, so we lived with our relatives. Makes me think about what I’d do if I have kids. Can I just give the kid to my parents?

What was your first job and why did you get it?
My first job, at 16, was at a healthcare facility doing front desk receptionist type work. I got paid minimum wage and my parents put it all in my 401(k). I worked there until I went to college.

Did you worry about money growing up?
I had a very happy childhood playing in the dirt with the worms, with a normal amount of concern over money. I knew it was limited and saw how hard my parents worked to earn it. I had a lot of screaming-crying matches with my mom when I lost a water bottle or damaged a pair of glasses, haha. I went to public school my whole life until graduate school. Big fan of good public education.

Do you worry about money now?
My dad has a job now that works him to the bone, so I don’t want to take money from him because I feel like it’s money that comes at the cost of his life. I did worry about money in New York City a bit, but I feel more comfortable now that I’m working. I really like the food and opportunities in the city and am grateful I got to be here, but it’s really stressful living here and not just because of cost. I think I am a chill farm person at heart — I get stressed by noise and being swarmed by people. I had my phone stolen the first week I was in New York, but this was also partially my fault for being on my phone in Times Square. But I also get free food sometimes from nice business owners. A lot of NYC people are very kind.

At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I am not financially responsible for myself: my parents help me out when I need it. I plan on going to more schooling so I will continue to have no real money for a while.

Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
My parents/relatives give me cash in red envelopes every new year. This is usually my fun money and I always use it on food.

8:30 a.m. — Monday! I’m at my boyfriend M.’s place because I was too lazy to go back home last night. I wake up to my alarm, and crawl over M., who is still sleeping, to turn it off. I continue snoozing and have a dream where I am about to eat some Philly cheesesteaks but my family members are going to work and they take all of my cheesesteaks. 

8:50 a.m. — I wake up and M. deals with me being annoyed at everyone stealing my Philly cheesesteaks. I took a seven hour in-person proctored exam on Saturday (IT WAS SO LONG), and had been working full time at my internship while studying, and now want to rest. I put on black leggings, braid my hair so it doesn’t look like a mess, and a comfy grey cotton long sleeve.

9:10 a.m. — M. signs me into his research building. I like working here, his building is beautiful.

9:30 a.m. — I book a hotel room for a work collaboration I’ve got coming up. I really should get a credit card. I keep telling myself: after undergrad, after my big exam, after I go back home… Sigh. Women in the 1970s fought for my right to have credit cards and I’m not using my rights. $486.16 (Expensed)

12 p.m. — After a morning of meetings, M. comes by to give me lunch that he packed for me: pork belly, rice and braised eggplant and heads off to a meeting with a colleague. Yum!

1 p.m. — Another meeting; I get assigned a task to do this week with another intern, who’s great. This whole team is really great, honestly. Everyone is really nice and chill, and they don’t judge me for asking stupid questions. I start thinking about how to fix the bug and coding. 

3 p.m. — Lol, so many access permission issues. I hop on another meeting. 

3:48 p.m. — Code is not working. I’m flying back home for the 4th of July, so I book the round trip flight tickets and tell my family my schedule. I reallyyy don’t like planes. I love sleeping and having a routine, and the flight just messes it all up. I miss being home, where composting is mandatory and I have my own compost bin and chickens and worms. Have I mentioned I love worms? $352

4:42 p.m. — I can’t concentrate, so I text some friends and go for a walk with M. 

7 p.m. — We walk to my place and have dinner. I am all out of leafy greens, so we make do with root vegetables, shrimp, beef, and lots of garlic and fruit, with a croffle from Trader Joe’s for dessert. I pack leftovers in a to-go box for M. to take home. He cleaned my room, so nice of him. 

7:30 p.m. — I call a mentor and work on an application. M. washes the dishes, then heads home. 

8:30 p.m. — A friend asks to call and I agree and go for a walk. It turns out to be such a waste of my time and I regret saying yes. I’m sooo iffy about this friend — she’s a classmate who reconnected recently through mutual friends. She’s SO smart but also somehow feels so much younger than me. I listen as she talks for a half-hour about how she went clubbing until 6 a.m. and barely get a word in. After 30 minutes, I make up a reason to hang up and walk home.

10 p.m. —  I go back to my code and try to do some work. Why is it not working? 

10:40 p.m. — I shower, and clean my face with Cetaphil face wash (bougie, I know), tea tree oil toner and Cetaphil moisturizer. I like to follow the KISS method when it comes to my skin. Why spend money to damage my skin barrier when I’m born with a face this gorgeous? 

11 p.m. — I check Slack and realize an intern left like a three-paragraph question. Time to grind out a prototype of some code. 

12:30 a.m. — Sleep.

8:45 a.m. — Good morning. It’s such a beautiful sunny day out today. I immediately hop over to continue working on the code.

9:20 a.m. — Message my mentor because I think it’s another access issue. Then I grab a hat and go for a walk. In case you can’t tell, I just live in my PJs, which are shorts and a T-shirt. I also grab an avocado from a fruit vendor outside my apartment. $1

10 a.m. — I was a little nervous the whole walk that my mentor would ask to call. Luckily it turns out to be an easy fix — just need to delete the lines of code that was giving me errors because turns out we don’t actually need them LOL. 

10:10 a.m. — I fry an egg with onions and peas and eat it with the avocado, rice noodles, and some blueberries. Then I continue working. 

10:45 a.m. — More meetings, I don’t know what is happening. So much corporate speak and trying to decide future directions. I meet some new people who are apparently super important. I also eat a scallion green onion pancake I cooked earlier. My supervisor does a really good job presenting to the non-technical bunch — their expectations are so high. 

12:30 p.m. — Finally done with meetings. I eat some dumplings with blueberries and try to process what we talked about. Then I go back to the failing code.

4 p.m. — I hop on a meeting with another intern and some mentors. She’s trying to do things in a different way, which seems to work, but I don’t understand. They decide to go with the way I was doing it.

5:20 p.m. — I need a break. I go for a 3-mile run because I need to get some groceries from Chinatown ($46). My friend tells me that someone we used to be friends with got the top senior award from my undergrad. Nothing against them, but I feel like their research was not that novel? I also get an acai bowl ($10) and buy some banana leaf rice ($9) from a Cantonese grandma on the side of the road. I ask her to adopt me and she laughs. $65

7:30 p.m. — Get the bus home. I have kimchi, Chinese broccoli, acai bowl, and a razorclam anchovy soup for dinner. $2.90

8 p.m. — Someone gave me some air-drying clay, so I have a clay night with one of my housemates. We’re gone to a lot of the same schools and have been friends for over 15 years. He was with me when my phone got stolen and the police officers asked us why we weren’t dating. I told them he loves money more. I make a chicken and a piece of toast with a fried egg out of the clay. He makes himself but cartoon form. We let it sit to air dry.

9 p.m. — I try to run some tests for my thesis and give up. I eat some Madison Fare yogurt that M. got me for finishing my exam this past Saturday. I call M. and complain for an hour about wanting to take a break from work. Mid call, my nose starts running crazily, my body starts feeling a little achy and I realize I’m getting sick.

11 p.m. — I listen to Ava Max and stretch for 15 minutes, and do my nighttime routine.

12:30 a.m. — Sleep. 

8:45 a.m. — So tired, I don’t want to get up. 

9 a.m. — Back to coding. I manage to get the code to a semi-presentable state. 

10 a.m. — Meeting with my mentor. We run the code together and find out most of the tests pass! Just two are failing. I reset my environment in hopes that it will solve the problems. 

10:45 a.m. — More meetings. I have it on as background noise as my edits lead to the same errors. I give up on coding and eat an onion, tomato, and garlic egg scramble and kimchi. I sit on the balcony and absorb some sunlight. Our team lead is great, he has such a high EQ and ability to break down problems in a way that makes sense. Great voice, too. 

12 p.m. — I go for a walk to Trader Joe’s to get some additional organic produce groceries. $57.14

1 p.m. — I wash some blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries and munch while eating tater tots, Chinese broccoli, and TJ’s chicken karage. Basically chicken and fries. I also eat a banana.

1:30 p.m. — I have another meeting that I thought was at 2 p.m. I am three minutes late because I didn’t see it on my calendar. We’re doing some cool cutting edge stuff! Three people messaged me asking where I was lol. 

2 p.m. — My mentor says the two tests that failed can be ignored for now. So I just push it to review.

3:20 p.m. — I do some jumping jacks. 

3:30 p.m. — Another meeting going over the overall project. Then I do some edits to address the reviews.

4:30 p.m. — That’s enough for the day. I rot for a bit. I find out the other intern pushed some code for the same issue but I think hers looks right. I make some edits to mine with her notes but the two tests continue failing. I don’t know how her tests look, but it’s not working for me. 

5:30 p.m. — Off to run on the treadmill at a gym neaby (which is free for people under 24). 

6:40 p.m. — Post one mile at max elevation and 3mph, and two miles at 7:50 pace. Haven’t run in two weeks (not including yesterday), so I felt this. I stretch a bit. My stomach hurts from the chicken and tater tots earlier. I have a weak stomach, and every time I eat something unhealthy, it comes back to bite me. But I like the taste sometimes :( 

8 p.m. — I get off the floor and start making dinner, boiling some dumplings with bok choy and making some vegan sushi. I call my mom briefly.

9 p.m. — I call M. He is also dying because of a presentation tomorrow. 

11 p.m. — I start prep for a meeting with my advisor tomorrow.

11:30 p.m. — I miss M. I tell him and he tells me he’s been thinking about me all day and we just need to get through until Friday. I sniff M.’s sweater that he left because it smells like him and go back to work. 

1:30 a.m. — I’ve made good progress, so I decide to stop here. My project is interesting to me, so it’s super easy to lose track of time. I wish I started working on it earlier, but yolo. Just trying to survive out here. I also feel strangely not-tired. I start reading some papers that my advisor sent me. 

1:45 a.m. — Okay, actually time for bed.

7:45 a.m. — Continue prepping. M. is so supportive, he sent me such cute messages last night and a funny photo of his face. When I’m stressed by life, I look at funny photos of him or read his CV to feel reassured LOL. Sometimes I forget how smart he is because he is so friendly. Cute, too. He’s lucky to have me. 

9 a.m. — I have a meeting with my advisor. We have a discussion about some interesting results. I get some constructive feedback that I need to remember things told to me before. Super fair, I’m a bit of an airhead, and I do the analysis at like crazy hours usually. She likes some of the results though. M. tells me not to worry. But I feel like once you have the idea that I’m not a super clean worker, it just sticks and that’s what my advisor thinks of me. I cry a little.

9:50 a.m. — I wonder if I’m too scatterbrained for all of this. I talked to my housemate yesterday and he told me that imposter syndrome is super common. But he’s also smart and hides it behind being friendly. M. tells me that this is par for the course and I feel a little better. I wash my face. Besides my good looks, another reason I like my face is that it’s hard to tell if I cried because my eyes bounce back fast.

10 a.m. — I have a meeting with my internship mentor. We troubleshoot some things. We fix it!! YES, FINALLY SOMETHING FULLY WORKING. 

10:40 a.m. — Idk what happened but now the tests stopped working. I remind myself if JFK Jr can make up citations, I’m not a fraud if my tests stop. At least I’m doing due diligence.

11 a.m. — I have meetings today until 4 p.m. I eat kimchi, tomato with onion egg and garlic, some hash browns, and a banana. I feel back to normal again after eating.

1 p.m. — My stomach hurts again. I guess no more potatoes — it’s related to the nightshade family so maybe my body can’t process well. I get something working though! I am happy now. Really interesting discussions today. 

2 p.m. — I remember seeing a mosquito while I was coding last night and ignoring it. I realize I have bug bites all over my body.

3 p.m. — I have a meeting for my thesis. I get a slightly passive aggressive comment that definitely wasn’t meant to be but kind of still stings. 

4:30 p.m. — The meeting ran over. Andddd things stopped working again. I tell M. to come over because I am losing my sanity. He tells me he’ll be over by 6ish. I start cooking dinner: seaweed clam soup with boiled veg, fried rice.

5:30 p.m. — My housemate comes back from work and we yap. He tells me it took him about half of his internship until he was at a point where he felt comfortable. This is reassuring. We go to the gym and I run three miles. 

6:10 p.m. — I see a pretty yellow hibiscus flower as I walk around to cool down. We eat dinner and have various berries for dessert. M. eats a croffle. I ask him how he’d fix a coding issue and he has some good suggestions. 

9 p.m. — M leaves. I work on some code and it runs! ^^ I celebrate by reading some manga and buying a necklace online, since the one I had for 10 years just broke yesterday. $23

9:50 p.m. — I call my mom and itch my bug bites. 

10:40 p.m. — Time for bed. 

8:30 a.m. — Good morning! I’ve been itching my bug bites all night. I need to get out of the house, so I head over to my school’s library to work. 

12 p.m. — Today is a chill day: have some meetings and interesting discussions. My supervisor is so sweet. I get birria tacos and consumé from a truck outside, then go back to work. $16.33

5 p.m. — I log off! M. comes over and we head to get some pho. I am a firm believer that NYC has no good pho and M. is determined to prove me wrong. I pick a place that looks promising and we take the bus to the restaurant. 

5:40 p.m. — It starts raining as we’re walking and we run to the restaurant, leapfrogging under various building scaffoldings.

6:30 p.m. — The food is AGGRESSIVELY mid, but the servers are so nice. I have lost all hope for Vietnamese food in NYC. I pay because I feel so bad for picking this place. M. fights me but gives in. We finish eating and wander all around the area and through Central Park, it’s so beautiful! $64.07

8 p.m. — We wander into a bookstore. I see a couple statistics books and after flipping through, realize it is written for a middle school reading level. Perfect for M. There’s also a picture book of angry cats, a couple of mangas I like, and a book called Disappointing Affirmations. I reread a chapter of Black Beauty, which I LOVED as a kid — it’s just as good as I remember. I think about the horses I see in Central Park. After a bit I look for M. and he’s in the kids’ section. 

9 p.m. — We wait in line for Ralph’s Italian Ice; M. gets this blue shake drink that looks radioactive and I get pineapple mango ice. He’s so cute, basically Asian Percy Jackson. I scratch my mosquito bites. I have 20. Mostly around my ankles/feet, but one on my forehead, two on my hip, one on my back and two on my knee.

10 p.m. — Back home! I text a girlfriend confirmation plans for our hangout tomorrow. I then rot. M. is sad to be leaving, so cute. I then scroll on Yelp and look at food.

11 p.m. — Shower and get ready for bed. I hear one of my housemates and one of their bfs (they currently have several) in their room doing it. (I am firmly convinced this bf does not have a home, because this one lives here almost 24/7). One of them opens the door to see the bathroom lights are on (because I’m using it) and slams the door when they realize it’s occupied. 

11:20 p.m. — The shower helped but my bug bites are itchy again.

12:30 a.m. — Reading Sunrise on the Reaping, unfortunately not enjoying — why does it feel like it was written for a younger audience? I really enjoyed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so this is a little disappointing. 

12:50 a.m. — I go to the bathroom that I share with that housemate and see liquid on the toilet seat and pubic hairs. Ew. I clean it up. This is the fifth time — the first three times I left it there. It was usually cleaned up within 15 hours. The fourth time I really had to go, so I cleaned it. I usually bring issues up but I don’t know how to have this conversation (update: I ended up never having the conversation and am moving out in a couple of months). Time to sleep.

9 a.m. — Saturday! I wake up to a happy eight-month anniversary text from M. (background detail for anyone who’s interested: We met in the school bookstore — he was tall and okay looking so I went up to him and pretended I didn't know where the hats were). I itch the bug bite on my back. 

9:30 a.m. — There is more pubic hair on the seat. If you were wondering why the complaining only started mid week, it’s because that housemate was out traveling with someone and just came back. I put on a blue floral dress and admire myself in the mirror for a bit. I really am so pretty. I itch my knee bug bite.

10 a.m. — I walk to Chinatown! It’s a good 4-mile walk jog. I think about how NYC really is a city where if you’re pretty, have your head on straight, and have some smarts, you can make anything you want come true. You don’t even need to be a good person. In fact, it’s better if you aren’t. I see a huge line of 60 grandmas and grandpas outside the Chinese community center. Must be free food.

11 a.m. — Brunch with my girlfriend V. in Chinatown! We’re high school friends, and she’s in the performing arts. She teaches me some art terms and it’s so cool to learn about life as an artist in NYC. I have mad respect for her, it seems too stressful for me. We talk about some of the plays she’ll be performing in and she tells me she’ll try to get some free tickets. I invited her to my orchestra concert a while back and she knew more about the composers than I did haha. $11.89

11:40 a.m. — We stumble upon an Eggette cart and I get some to share. A cute grandma offers to take our photo and tells us to open wide LOL. We walk around. $2.50

12:30 p.m. — I’m craving an icy dessert because it’s so hot. We get some fruit in condensed milk and sugar ice. We’re so stuffed. $9

1:15 p.m. — I hop on the bus to go back home. I listen to some first year associates talking about how you shouldn’t gossip about your supervisors and how office jobs are just sitting around. I text friends I’ve been accidentally ghosting. I step outside and it is POURING! I run the half a block to my apartment and end up soaking wet. $2.90

1:45 p.m. — Back home! I rot a bit. 

3:15 p.m. — I should be doing work but I am rotting. 

4 p.m. — I head over to M.’s place because otherwise an object at rest will stay at rest (I am the object). I take the bus. $2.90

6 p.m. — I make fried rice for dinner. M. cleans. 

11:30 p.m. — We do work, talk, and fool around until it’s time for bed. It’s nice to be dating someone who also is a best friend. I also call my mom. Lights out! 

9:45 a.m. — We wake up. It was a really unrestful night for both of us — we both woke up intermittently to itch our bug bites. I also have very lucid dreams about being unable to fix my coding issues and am just coding the whole night. Fighting bugs in my dreams and in my life for real. 

10:10 a.m. — We leave for Brooklyn! $2.90

12 p.m. — The train was SO delayed. We also got confused/took the wrong bus. We get brunch in Brooklyn, and then walk over to Coney Island to walk along the pier and see the sights. M. gets a ton of bird love, and manages to dodge the first big chunk, but gets hit with bird poop while dodging the first. Neither of us are amusement park people so we don’t go on any rides. I am afraid of going on roller coasters LOL. 

5 p.m. — We take the bus back to Manhattan. $2.90

6 p.m. — We have a reservation for dinner at Au Cheval! I’ve wanted to come here to try their burger for ages. It’s fine? It tastes like In-N-Out. 

7 p.m. — We decide to get dessert and fight over the bill. I win. We then have a discussion over how we want to deal with going out in the future. We agree that so long as it’s below a certain amount, M. can pay. After that, I can. $13.01

7:30 p.m. — We take two buses home. My family has some good drama that I need to aggressively text the family group chat to hear. $5.80

9 p.m. — Back home! We do some work — life of grad students, baby. 

11 p.m. — Time for bed.

“This week was an unusual week since I had to book both a hotel room for a research collaboration (reimbursed) and a flight back home. That aside, this is generally on par with what I spend in a week, I try to keep expenses to around $150-$200 per week. I also think my rent is a bit high, but I’m in an expensive part of Manhattan. I’ll be moving to a cheaper location soon! I spend a lot on food, but this is an active choice since I plan on going to a different location for more schooling and I only buy organic. Might as well eat my way through NYC while I can :)”