[75-132] I was off for five days after I came home from school. I started working at my internship. It’s two credits for the internship. I was very excited. It was very fulfilling experience. The company was very good. I was able to achieve a lot of personal goals and spend time with friends on the weekends. I went dinner with my team. My boss was not very good at communication. A lot of times I wouldn’t hear back from her for two months at a time, which is kind of hard to work with when things are time sensitive.
[137-236] I worked at a hundred years old and big company where they make couplings for piping systems. I worked in the regulatory compliance department that only have ten people. Two main projects that I was given was to evaluate a mechanical T, which is a coupling that you can put on an existing pipe to add at a branch. My job was to test them against competitors to prove that ours are superior. The second project was to evaluate some gaskets that are not traditionally used because we want to move into more diverse markets.
A lot of my internship at the beginning was understanding codes and doing research. I was able to plan the tests myself, choose the size and number of products I wanted to use. I confirmed with my supervisor, order, and wait for them. While I was waiting, another project was brought to me. It’s called CE Mark which is almost all electronics. We have these marks on our products since we are a global company. My job was to prepare and organize for an audit. I was there to help ensure that we fix gaps and got to see how the audit works. I continue to replace missing files and waiting for my other parts to come in. Once those parts came in, I was in the shop every day to cut pipe rolling to attach the couplings to pipe and assembling. Over the course of two weeks, I tested 21 assemblies and 15 gasket grains.
I think the internship prepared me to manage time and figure out what’s the best solution. I was not prepared for independence but adapting it. In school, I’m given assignments and was told what to do. Here, I was given problems to figure out how to test by myself. Neither my team leader nor my director of regulatory were there on my first day. I met with the team and started a week early. I met with one person who introduced me to everybody. Most of my interactions were with the team leader. Most days I contacted with him while I need his help. I also work with another person during the audits to go over files. I was trying to learn as we went along. The interactions were limited to my team leader, director of regulatory, and my team. Everyone always interacted with me on a personal level.