How Doing An Internship at Philips Changed My Life

Today, I concluded my internship at Philips, the company that spoke to both my heart and mind, with an 8.0!

Before I thank to all the people who helped me get here, I would like to talk a bit about how doing my internship at Philips changed my life. I am aware that this sounds quite exaggerated but you will give me credit after you are done reading the rest.

As many of you know, I am a third-year ICT & Technology student at Fontys University of Applied Sciences and I was required to do my internship during the period of September 2020 and January 2021. Although it was quite overwhelming when I started looking for an internship during this Corona time, I was very lucky to get a very good internship offer from a global company which I was planning to accept. However, I soon got a call from a start up and they convinced me to join them by offering me a full-time student engineering position for the duration of summer holiday. This also meant that I had to decline the offer I received previously from the global company.

My aim with accepting this offer was to further improve my professional skills and have a work experience even before I graduate. However, after working in this start up for a week, I was told that my contract was going to be cancelled and instead, a new contract for a summer internship was going to be prepared which was also full-time and paid low to none, because I was not good enough for the student engineering position.

At this point, I felt very dissapointed but thought that I could do another semester at school such as minor or additional courses. Nevertheless, I was disappointed again after seeing that the application deadlines had already passed which meant I was going to have a study delay of half a semester. This was the last straw and I was at the edge of dropping out from school.

Amidst all the disappointment, I called my mother, Emilia Ivanova (or with the turkish name Gül?en ?smailo?lu), who was always able to give me the best direction. After the call, I realized a few facts such as I was not asked any technical interview questions before I was offered the position at the start up. It was also very fun to realize that the person who hired me had not seen the line of "2nd year student" on my resume and asked me whether I was doing my graduation or 3rd year internship during the meeting after the first week. This clearly showed me that it was not that I was not good enough, but they simply did not proceed a professional hiring process.

With the encouragements of my mother, I decided to look for another internship, despite the fact that I had less than a month to get one, and started applying again. One of the internships I applied was Factory IT Developer Internship at Philips. Luckily, I got the internship on the deadline of finding an internship!

This taught me that my perception of what I am capable of determines what I really am capable of. It is just like an illusion created by your mind, the more you train your mind to believe in yourself, the more powerful and confident you get and visa versa (as some might call the law of attraction).

It also thought me that everything happens for a reason and believing in the flow of your own journey and never giving up is the best thing you can do. Such as, if I did not go through all these, I would not be able to do my internship at Philips and meet all the amazing people I met.

No surprise, I am feeling so grateful for having this opportunity given to me by my company supervisor Nils Goorden who did guide me terrifically good with all his determination for doing the best he can. I also feel very lucky for having Christina Morgan as my university tutor who helped me significantly with her advices and feedback. Hereby, I thank them both sincerely again.

I would also like to thank the engineers Pim Scheffers, Ton Janssen, Jari Wernaart who threw a light on the problems I had faced.

Finally, to the reader who has read it this far, thank you very much for letting me share my experience with you and remember to always believe that you can achieve anything you set your mind to!