Months that Feel Like Days: The Anatomy of an Internship

Some things never change. As a child, August marked the transition from late night hangouts with friends to (what seemed like) long days of school and the underlying loss of freedom. As a senior entering his final semester of college, I still find myself lamenting these early August days. Now, however, this gloom is not because of what’s to come, but of what I’m having to leave.

As I write this on the penultimate week of my internship, I find myself wishing to rewind the calendar to take me back to the first days of the program.? Though it was only ten weeks ago, those mid-May days when I arrived on my company’s campus for orientation carry a certain nostalgia. At the time, I had only a vague idea of the projects I would work on and the things I would learn, but the unknown actually made me more excited for what was to come. I trusted that each day would bring more clarity as I was gradually introduced to my department’s projects and I learned how I’d contribute to them. My projects are now coming to a close, and in the process of packaging my work to be handed off to full time members, it’s hard not to reflect on my time.

????????????? Fair warning- the following is not a procedural of the work I did. The projects I worked on can be found on my LinkedIn page and I encourage you to check that out (the variety of things I worked on was amazing and it reinforces why I enjoyed my time so much). Rather, this article will focus on the?difficult nature of an internship.?How great ones set you up to grow attached to a company’s culture, purpose, and people, but are designed for you to leave at the height of your engagement.?If you’ve ever been an intern that could not return to your company, these themes will probably resonate- maybe even act as a catharsis for you. If you’re a full-time employee who runs an intern program, hopefully this can give insight into the perspective of an intern. Let’s begin.

The Highs and Lows ?

In a few ways, my first internship may have been the most special. It came as I was finishing my freshmen year of college: an age when an internship is more of a wish than an expectation. My value as a worker was anything but obvious. The only measure of my competency was a three-digit GPA achieved through a mere ten college courses. Nonetheless, I still remember receiving the offer, and am, to this day, grateful they took a chance on me. This belief in me was motivation to work as hard as I could, and it pushed me to perform my best.

The company was a small non-profit without an established intern program, but they could have fooled me. The program was so well planned that it seemed impossible that this was their first time running it- but it was. HR scheduled information sessions dedicated to teaching my fellow intern and I every area of the business. Additionally, several executives (including the CEO) met with us for lunch, serving as some of the best mentorship experiences I’ve had.

????????????? The culture was also incredibly strong. 2022 was a time when offices struggled to bring employees back to the office, but this company had the opposite problem. There were days where it was hard to find an open cubicle because so many people came into work. Water cooler talk spurred collaboration and productivity, making every day new and exciting. Among this excitement, I nearly forgot that it was not a full-time job, but simply an internship. I became so engrossed in my work, taking pride in every deliverable, that it made the final week feel all the more abrupt. The 10 weeks flew by. Turning in my laptop felt like the ceremonial end to a summer that existed outside the monotony of college life.

????????????? In hindsight, I was rarely conscious of passage of time during this internship. As I mentioned before, there were moments when I legitimately forgot that college was not over. Reflecting on these things certainly shaped the way I approached my following two internships. It taught me to be intentional about the way I spend my time, and to embrace the good and the bad. After all, internships are fleeting experiences so they shouldn’t be squandered.

????????????? In the following two years, I sought new internships in an effort to diversify my experiences. After sophomore year, I worked as a logistics intern at a food redistribution company where I immersed myself in supply chain operations. And at the moment, I’m in the home stretch of a software product management internship at a leader in the safety science industry (more details are posted on my LinkedIn). With each new experience, I've have gotten better at pacing myself so I can enjoy each one to its fullest.

Preventing Time From Slipping Away

?? Though I’ve developed strategies to slow down the summer days, these strategies are all psychological devices that operate independent of the 60 seconds destined to pass in a minute and 1440 minutes in a day. Another difficult part of managing your time is that we sometimes perceive time as passing too slowly. As much as I’ve cherished my internships, it would be disingenuous to pretend there weren’t rough days. There have been lulls in each experience where the hours crawled by. In these times, it is even more vital that you keep things in perspective. The quieter moments of your internship are great opportunities for self-enrichment and seeking out tasks from other workers.?

????????????? The foundation of having a successful internship is keeping track of time. In theory, this should be easy. After all, a virtual calendar is never more than a few taps away on your phone. Time after time, though, we get that feeling of “where did the time go?”

????????????? A great remedy to this problem is setting OKRs- a practice introduced to me at my latest internship. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, and they’re exactly what they sound like. They are measurable goals that should be set at the beginning of your internship. Objectives refer to overarching goals; key results should be attached to objectives and signal the specific ways that you will evaluate your progress. If your ‘O’ (objective) is to display an advanced knowledge of data visualization, then your ‘KR’ could be to create a dashboard on Tableau by the end of the month. These are two of mine from this summer:

????????????? They serve as structured ways to hold yourself accountable and keep you cognizant of the time remaining in your internship. Each key result’s deadline is a bookmark in the summer that reminds you of what you’ve accomplished, as well as what you want to accomplish. Having written OKRs for the first time this summer, I can testify that it paced me better and slowed down my summer. It also lessened the feelings of being overwhelmed during busy weeks and bored during the slower ones. More people are realizing the value of professional development, and with that, tools like OKRs are becoming more prevalent. There might be cleverer (and maybe more practical) ones you can use. The important thing is you find one that works for you, and that you commit yourself to it so you can track your time and achievements.

????????????? Hopefully, my story can resonate with fellow sophomores, juniors, seniors who are departing their organizations, and returning to campus. Of course, there are silver linings. LinkedIn allows you to keep in touch with managers/coworkers and see all their new and exciting events. Some organizations have even allowed interns to continue doing work for them throughout the school year which is a tremendous development enabled by the remote working trend. Whatever the case, staying in touch with an organization and its members is easier than ever. Still, I’ll soon be exchanging my exciting, real-world projects for more structured, routine homework assignments. Even so, I’m returning to campus with vigor, looking for ways to grow, while knowing I made the most out of the past three months.