3 Key Lessons from My 1st week of Summer Internship

Hi everyone! I am happy to share that I have officially finished my first week of internship at KRAFTON Inc. !

Let me introduce myself first. I have just completed my sophomore year at ASU, majoring in Honors Business Data Analytics with a certificate in International Business. After deciding to take a gap year in Korea, I applied for an AI Strategy Team internship via LinkedIn and secured a spot! I would like to share lessons from my experience and provide insights to students aiming to work in the gaming or tech industry.

Krafton is a game publisher and developer known for challenging itself to create unique games and for owning the mega IP, PUBG. Krafton pioneered the establishment of a new genre of gaming called “Battle Royale.” This is one of the first mega IPs from Korea to receive global attention.

It means a lot to me to start my early career at one of the fastest-growing gaming companies, which began from pure entrepreneurship! I was especially excited to work at the intersection of tech and business.

This experience has added more professionalism to my nerdy passion for games! So, in today’s post, I would like to share three key takeaways from my first week of the internship:

1. Never forget to greet, communicate, and help!

These were my three goals from the beginning: 1) Greet as many people as possible every day, 2) communicate transparently, and 3) never hesitate to share things that could be helpful to others. Throughout my past years, I had an experience of poor communication when I was so immersed in my work that I prioritized it over people. However, through various team projects and startup experiences during university, I learned the importance of being open-minded and sharing helpful resources instead of keeping them to myself. I kept these three lessons in mind and applied them to my internship, and it’s been working well so far! I will still try to stay humble, maintain these disciplines, and share the final lessons I learn once my internship ends!

2. Spend more time understanding the purpose of the work!

There is a saying by Einstein, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” This week, I spent time understanding the projects and tasks from my department and team. I read the team and internship descriptions to learn how I can contribute most efficiently and effectively. I think I have read at least a few hundred pages of documents and books while writing deliverables. I am still on my learning curve, but the more time I spend, the faster I can accelerate my adaptation to the work. I realized that after understanding the work, I was able to write quality solutions and deliverables rather than working based on assumptions.

3. Learn terms and domain knowledge outside of work.

Outside of work, I constantly read and watched materials regarding the domain knowledge I had less understanding of during work so that I could catch up. Since AI is one of the fastest-growing domains, just spending time within work hours was not enough. I came to the workplace early or spent time studying after work to understand the technical parts of AI and strategic management frameworks. I believe the work I do can be achieved better with constant study and dedication, and this actually helped me a lot to catch up with work much faster!

If you have any question or concern, please reach out to me through my LinkedIn DM! I would love to help you more!

These are my three lessons from work that I found useful! I hope this helps you navigate your 1st week of internship experience!