Since sept 2013, I have been doing a Masters in mathematical finance. Our course requires us to do an off-cycle internship of 5 months minimum (typically, from April to September). During this internship, I'm supposed to do something that is at least remotely related to mathematics/finance, and at the end of the internship, I have to give a report of what I have done. The content of that report is supposed to contain actual mathematical researchs / developments / ideas, and is necessary for the obtention of my diploma.
Unfortunately, since my internship started I have been given absolutely no work fitting the requirements. What I've actually been tasked to do is repetitive work consisting in using a software to process tons of record from a database, generating new records as output, and making sure the generated data is consistent. Whenever of these jobs fail I have to debug the software and propose a fix to make the job work. There is roughly ~50 millions records to be processed and the end goal is that all of them were processed correctly. As far as I can tell there is no way this will be done by the end of my internship, which is in 2 months. What's worse is that the team I'm in is facing increasing pressure to have all these records processed soon, while the higher-ups are heavily implying that it is taking so long because we are slacking off. This is pretty annoying because I want to make a good impression and I'm working as good as possible, but at the same time I don't feel like it is worth the effort to work extra-hard on this, given how little recognition I get and given that I will leave before the positive consequences of my work can affect me.
What can I do in my situation ? I haven't started my internship report yet (I don't even know what subject I could do it on), and I know I will to do it on my own time. At the same time the repetitive nature of my work makes me pretty burned out and whenever I never feel like working on maths for several hours.
TLDR: my 6 months internship that is supposed to be about mathematical finance is actually about doing extremely tedious work, and I have to complete a report by the end about all the mathematical research I'm supposed to have done.
What would you do in that situation ?