Unpaid Internship: intern or work experience?

[Spirit]

Hello,

I'm in the process to apply for several jobs tomorrow and next week. I have two strong internships even though they are unpaid. In the linguistic sense; I was working in demanding tasks. However, can I say in my cover letter that I 'worked' or should I explicitly say I 'interned'? In my resume, I have an explicit category for internship and another one for work experience.

I want to be ethical and don't want to play tricks. At the same time, I want to express my full potential as the market is tough these days.

Thanks in advance,
-Spirit,

 

[aostraff]

You had internships and you don't want to play tricks, then go for internship. But it sounds like you want to sound like you got paid without being technically incorrect. If so, play a trick and use 'work'.

 

[Spirit]

Thanks aostraff,

Actually most of the work I was doing, during the period when I have interned, was no less that the work done by many others who were paid to work at the same place.

In other words, my question is: if the word 'work' is used as a verb to describe what I was doing at an unpaid internship, will it be proper? or should I always use 'interned'?

I am not a native speaker of English, and I want to make sure my word usage is correct and at the same time not hiding my true potential.

 

[aostraff]

Oh. I think it's fine to just use 'work' as a verb throughout the document. It sounds more natural. You might want to say you did an internship at the beginning.