Key Takeaways and Advice from My Internship
As my summer internship is coming to an end, I would like to reflect on my new experiences. I accomplished so much at my internship and hope to apply these skills and experiences in the future.
- Even if you’re not “learning,” you are. At the beginning of my internship, I believed that I wasn’t learning as much as I could. Rather, I was teaching others and myself. These are leadership and collaborative skills that I used. I was also dealing with conflict that I was able to learn from. From these situations, we was able to understand how to resolve conflict. This is an example of the soft skills that I learned. Not all skills have to be completely technical!
- Be Social! I have made a few really great friends through the course of the internship. It was extremely fun to have others that understood the process and how I was feeling. Not only that, but they were able to help me grow as a person personally and professionally.
- Express your emotions and opinions. I feel that working at a smaller and start-up company, it easier to get your opinions through to the higher ups and make changes. I definitely feel that for this to even happen, you need to tell them how you feel. There were situations where I felt that the company would benefit from certain changes that they could make and I told them that. They were understanding and accepting of my opinions. I also made sure these opinions were not just completely personal, but had some research or evidence behind them.
Although these felt like a short couple of months, I believe that I learned so much. I learned something new everyday whether it be about the company, a software, an application, and even myself. It was an extremely rewarding experience that I would not want to change.