My Internship Journey: 5 Remarkable Lessons Learned

I have recently completed my Summer Internship and had an incredible learning curve with unique experiences, challenging decisions, and astounding results. I felt sharing the learnings with a broader audience would help more people, so here I am with this article with a 5 remarkable lessons learned and how to best make use of the internship duration:

1. Observe:

I cannot stress how vital observation is during an internship. Every process in place in any organization has a vision and a brain of its own influenced by the thoughts and perspectives of the creators and executors of the process.

Observe the idea behind a process, learn to observe what's deep within, the latent part in the processes that provides a way to work your way through organizations.

Every word that is spoken, every task that is assigned, every mannerism, and every body posture and gesture talks a lot about the organization and the people. Put your entire focus on observation, which in turn gives a more profound perspective towards various things and makes you curious with many questions; hold there!

2. Understand:

Once there is an observation, put your thoughts to work, have a perspective about why things are happening the way they are, and do not jump to conclusions without complete comment.

You get to see only the tip of the iceberg most of the time, be with an open mind. Ask if you have questions, reach out to people for more information and get a clear understanding of the tasks, processes, business, why you are interning, and what value you are adding.

Having an in-depth knowledge of things is always of great help.

3. Explore:

Once you have observed and understood what you are supposed to do and why you are supposed to, explore the ways to do it better and explore effective ways of doing not only your task but also other processes.

Explore the pain points, and see if you can come up with some ideas or suggestions to mitigate the pain points. Explore the direction of the entire project, and check the alignment with the business, suggest any changes if you believe there can be more value addition from your end.

Before suggesting, conduct a thorough analysis of all the options at hand that were explored.

4. Execute:

Time for some action now. You have observed, you have understood, you have explored, analyzed, and got the approvals for the line of execution. Now go ahead and accomplish the deliverables.

It is a presumption that you need to complete the deliverables in the best way possible, but uniqueness is more important than perfection.

Add your unique touch to the execution, and make it look like it is not only the process but the person who is behind that process is also equally important.

5. Embrace:

The most important part, not only in an internship but in life all total is to enjoy what you are doing, embrace things around you, love everything with an open mind, and have the innocence and curiosity of a child who is always enthusiastic and excited.

Have a lot of fun, talk to a lot of people, meet strangers, greet with warmth and passion, enjoy every minute of every day, make the best use of time not only for professional growth but personal enrichment as well, and look for the fulfillment factor, and pursue it.

Let me end this with a beautiful quote from my Godfather in Literature, William Shakespeare,

"All is well that ends well. If it is not happy, it is not the end."

Hope reading this article made some sense and provided some insights.

Pic Credits: Poets&Quants

#learnings #internship #internshipexperience #journey #growth