Written Response: Ethical Considerations

This question is somewhat difficult for me to answer.  My internship has no clientele.  My internship wasn't within the bounds of a corporate structure.  There wasn't much opportunity for any kind of ethical issues.  I think a possible ethical issue is that my internship was so relaxed that I could likely get away with not doing an assigned task in its entirety.  During my time working on editing my Supervisor's latest book, I think it would have been easy to just stop reading after a while.  Most of the issues she wanted me to look for were in the first part of the novel.  It wasn't hard to see that there would likely be few examples of the particular issue after this point.  It was a week where I was helping with my church's Vacation Bible School in the evening.  These were long tiring evenings.  My usual work time is in the evening after I have gotten done with everything else.  I came home late after VBS and usually waited even longer to get to work because I had friends from church that wanted to come over.  On nights like these bringing myself to work on reading through and exhaustively annotating my Supervisor's work seemed like the last thing I wanted to do. 

I could see an issue of this similar sort popping up again.  The problem could be that, during a hectic time in my personal life, my Supervisor gives me a task that she needs me to complete in a set amount of time.  I could very easily see myself struggling to use my time effectively and consider not finishing or not working with the standard of thoroughness I should on such an occasion.  I could likely half-complete the assignment and it would seem to be finished.  If I were to hand in the work with the semblance of being complete, I could just say nothing and be safe.  If I were to speak up and say that I had not done my work like I ought to, I would have to face her disapproval.   

Ultimately, I think this scenario is flawed.  I would likely be able to get more time or just do what I was supposed to do.  However, were this to actually occur, I think I would admit to what I had done.  I don't know that is what I would do for sure, but I think I would own up to my actions.  I might try to soften the blow with a little finesse, but I think it would be better to own up to what I had done.  I would likely be forgiven and everything would be ok, but this is not a situation I would like to be stuck in.  I value my relationship with my Supervisor too much for her to be disappointed in me.  I would utterly hate to let her down like this.  It would be a huge temptation to just keep quiet and not have to face her disappointment.