It’s 9pm on a Friday and as I listen to Pentatonix new album -which is absolutely amazing!- I can finally say that I have officially completed my first week as an intern.
So cheers to that! I don’t have wine though.
Although it’s been technically less than a week, five days to be more specific, I’ve already learn a lot while being there. And I’m not saying this just because it’s what almost everybody and his cousin says when they start to intern or because it’s the nice thing to say or write in this case but because I now understand how true it is.
First, considering that I’ve been in college for the past two years and I’m hopefully graduating the next one, I can say that I know how hard it can get sometimes. Especially during those occasions where you start to question whether you made the right decision when choosing your major, which I’ve done quite a few times when on stress mode. By this I’m not saying that everyone is going to get through that 100% for sure but if you’ve been there, you know it’s tough. However, now that I’m finally seeing what it’s really like out there, I’m loving it because I have the opportunity to apply in real life what I’d learnt and am still learning at school and complement that with what I’m doing at work, and since I do enjoy what I’m doing it’s even better.
Second, if you want to succeed while juggling your intern, student and personal life, time management it’s a must! While this may seem like is something even your dog knows, we don’t actually apply it on our daily lives, until you start to intern during weekdays after school and you don’t really have much of an option anymore. However, you can still manage to get good grades, have a good experience during your internship, not lose your friends and while we’re at it have at least six hours of decent sleep. And I know what you’re thinking, we’re not allowed to use time-turners anymore even if we find one, so probably you don’t believe me but I can assure you that it is possible. You only have to find a system that works for you and I want to emphasize that because the type of schedule that I feel comfortable with might not give you the same results. So you have to find or create one based on your personal preferences and of course stick to it.
Finally, if I didn’t actually know how important it is to be open-minded, now I do. Not only because obviously what happens at work is not exactly like what you’re taught at school but because you’re basically doing an internship to learn. On that note, sometimes the learning process can develop in unexpected ways and we have to be able to appreciate that and try to get rid of some of our preset ideas and really value what we are experiencing even if it’s not at first what we were expecting because there will always be something we can get from it.
10 Years From Now 