Wednesdays — the day people scramble to their office computers or smartphones to check bank accounts. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s payday.

Unless you’re me, in which case Wednesday is about going to work as an unpaid intern.

This summer I worked once a week as a marketing intern for a local resource center. As it is with any job, there were days that I thoroughly enjoyed and others where the saving grace was the free coffee.

However, at this job I wasn’t working for the weekend or a pay stub, which lent itself to teaching me a lesson.

Don’t ever accept a job you don’t love

It’s cliché, but you really have to do what you love. Love what you do and the job won’t come down to making it to payday every two weeks. At the very least, find something you love in your job and enjoy that.

I love writing and this internship challenged me to write a ton, especially on topics that I wasn’t overly knowledgable about. However, being an intern meant that there would be typical intern duties to complete.

One day I spent over an hour sorting questionnaires. It was mind-numbing stuff, but it made me appreciate the opportunity to sit down and type when the task was done. Plus the hour session of sorting colors was a great time to explore inside my head (not as scary as it sounds, I promise).

Loving what you do comes down to intrinsic movitation. Unpaid work removes the extrinsic reward of a paycheck, leaving the person to find another reason to show up every day.

The challenge of not getting paid forced me to consider whether the position was truly something I wanted to pursue.

This reminded me of the Freakenomics episode on how to make a garden “weed itself.” By stipulating on the job application that the position is unpaid, the company weeds out a great deal of people who are in search of a paycheck.

The applicants left are the ones who are there for the experience. They’ll love the work and are willing/able to forgo the paycheck.

Thankfully it was. I am passionate about communication, telling stories and spreading information. I agreed to work ten hours a week without a single monetary return because working on these skills was enough reward for me. Obviously there was opportunity costs involved, but I didn’t want to let that deter me.

In a commencement address at Maharishi University, Jim Carrey stated a useful anecdote about going for what you’re passionate about. He gave the example of his father, an accountant, who chose that career because it was practical and he was too scared of failing at comedy. However, when he was let go from his job, it Carrey learned something life changing.

“You can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

If that means surviving a summer as an unpaid intern, categorizing questionnaires, so be it. When it’s out of love, it’s not work.

That’s what I learned this summer — a paycheck in it of itself.