[5-62] As a result, this semester I’m working for a company and it has five major divisions. There’s paper, lumber, hydro, and then I forget what the other two are. One might be petroleum. But I worked in the Hydro division. The Hydro division designs, manufacturers, and rehabilitates turbines and other components for hydro-power. I worked in the turbine team. I was a turbine engineering intern. Like most internships, I did pretty much what was needed of me. But it definitely was not like, “Go get us coffee, go file this meaningless paperwork so that you have something to do.” It was actual work that applies to the things I’m learning in school and it gives me experience that I’ll be able to take moving forward. Actually, there were some Excel spreadsheet things they wanted me to fill. Then there are also a lot of situations they would hand me a technical drawing and they would say, “We need you to remodel this and make a new drawing because this one is out of date.” I would do that. There were a few design projects I was actually in on where I was able to come up with the design that would be used for various things in the field. If there’s anything else I can say about that, but that’s pretty much the general overview of my experience at my internship.
[112-128] Interestingly, the onboarding process was different at this company in comparison to last summer. When I started at the company, at my internship last summer, it was a lot of interns. They put us in a room and gave us a presentation. But at this company, I was the only intern at the beginning. Since then, there’s only been one or two others that I’ve seen. It’s a different type of thing. They didn’t have an orientation day set up for me, but what they had, it’s called an eight by eight by eight. It goes eight hours, eight days, eight weeks. You have a list of things that you need to do, and you have a contact for doing that. Then you have a place for them to sign once you complete it. Some of the stuff was read the code of conduct, go on our website. There was a PowerPoint they wanted me to go through that kind of talks about what’s in a powerhouse, so I understand what I’m doing. But there was also the Solid Edge tutorials. I got a tour of the machine shop that’s there. There’s also a hydraulics laboratory and getting tours of those was part of my orientation. That was, eight hours it was the first day, get your ID, do the basic stuff.
Eight weeks or eight days was the tutorials that really get you started. Then the eight weeks was the go online and look at these supplemental materials. It was up to me to do that. My supervisor, I don’t really talk to my supervisor that much. He’s very helpful. He sets me up, if I have questions, he tells me where to go. But the internship is very self-driven. I set up my trainings, I set up my projects, and I talk to the people I need to talk to. Unless I need him for something or he needs me for something, which is not a lot, I just kind of go on and do what I’m doing how I want to do it.
