Do internships really matter?
Today I've been to a mall with my friend. He observed that the security at the entrance is using pen and paper to count number of visitors entering the mall. He said "the security could have used a counter".
I remembered the project that I've done during my Bachelor's internship way back in 2012. It was titled "Automatic room light controller with visitor counter using IR sensor".
Infra Red sensors are placed at the entrance and when ever someone passes through it, counter is incremented by one and lights in the room automatically turn on. With each entry, the counter gets incremented by one. When some one exits, the counter gets reduced by one and when the last person exits, the lights automatically turnoff and counter displays zero.
I continued telling him my internship story. I have done another project which was on Control Area Network protocol which was developed by Robert Bosch and Co. The project was titled "CAN based collision avoidance system".
The project was about using this protocol in cars to avoid collisions. Using this protocol, car's motor is connected to a collision avoidance sensor. This sensor triggers a warning when the car goes in proximity to any obstacle and the motor of the car stops rotating.
During the internship, I have burnt many micro controllers, faced several failures during test phases but have learnt how to do the projects properly to get the desired outcome.
These two projects got me second prize in a University level project presentation competition. Though the ideas are not my own, I got a lot of exposure to technology by working on these projects. You can see the magical working of devices that you have been studying for years. No matter how much you study, the work done by you teaches you much more.
I could observe change in my thinking after my internship. After you see devices in real life rather than just reading about them from text books, you could visualize whatever you study and it gets registered in your brain and you can reproduce content with more clarity and knowledge in the exam.
#technology #educationpolicy #education #highereducation