When internship project and work are in conflict
Fortunately, my company have a very well-constructed program for interns that involves on-boarding training, mentorship, lunch n learn and also an internship project. The internship project is supposed to take about 20% of our time, while actual work with each individual department should take the rest 80%. However, this sometimes is not the reality.
There are few hard deadlines and internal ones for this project especially in the last three weeks as we start compiling the final strategy deck. In reality, we spent at least 3-4 working hours regrouping and making these decks. However, we are also supposed to help out with team work. A dilemma I ran into is when I checked in with manager, they will assign me tasks to do, but at the same time I have intern project to follow up. Which one to prioritize is the main problem. The best strategy that interns agreed on is to let our managers know beforehand about this project and let them be aware of any hard deadline you are committed to. Therefore, it won’t surprise them when you are not around their desks all the time or when you need more time to complete a task assigned.