A tale of two internships

I went through two internships in two different countries and different fields. The first was as a Quality Assurance technician at company that made crisps (nik-naks) in Botswana. I was paid a decent allowance which for a time made me live like a boss. But I didn't do much at work, all I did was check oil levels in the morning and do a bit of spreadsheet work. I'd be done by 10am after starting at 8am. I was so bored I became a minesweeper wiz, a skill which turned out to be surprisingly useful in my second internship. Other than minesweeper I learnt nothing, made no meaningful connections for future employment, and didn't gain any noticeable career growth. But I had money which was nice. The internship came to an end after 3 months and I went back to being broke ol' me with more or less the same skills I had before, plus minesweeper.

Five years later I taught myself to code and sought out an internship as a software developer in South Africa. Without a traditional education in computer science potential employers were reluctant to try me out and were quickly dismissive. But one of them, who was super skeptical I could code after a few months of teaching myself online decided to humour me. They offered me an internship on condition I complete a coding challenge before the end of the day, the guy had a smirk on his face which clearly said he expected me to fail. It was 1pm, I had 4 hours. The challenge was to create the windows desktop game... MINESWEEPER. I had to hold back a smirk of my own. I was a minesweeper wiz! I'd spent hours reading theory on the game back at my last internship, when I started learning to code I recreated and customised the game so many times I could hack it out while I was drunk. Two hours later I had an official internship contract. I didn't get paid, and I worked my butt off. Never had time for games, or sleep. I was pushed past my limits and achieved levels of focus I never knew I was capable of.The company paid for my Microsoft certification exams and I studied late at night to pass every one of them. In a little while I became qualified as a Microsoft Certified Professional. Then job offers started rolling in. After 6 months as an intern I got a permanent job and never looked back.

And that is the tale of my two internships.