[11-13; 152-155; 158-162; 165-167] The spring semester started in January. Since I needed to apply for a lot of summer internships, I spent a lot of time writing cover letters and editing my resume, which required me to concentrate less on school. The school has a career service where they can review your resume and will help you with improving your resume. I went there a couple times, which also took time from my calendar, but I think it’s worth it. Then, right after the session in career services, I fixed what they told me to fix, and then I sent the revised resume to the company. Usually the company calls back and asked to schedule an interview or request additional information such as grades. Yeah. And then, I needed to find some time in my calendar where I could have the interview with the company. I prepared for the interview by viewing their website and reading information about the company such as their goals, what they’re doing, so I would be prepared and know something about the company before talking with them.
Tag: internships & co-ops
[167-170; 174-181] Towards the end of March and beginning of April, the companies start to contact me with offers. I received a couple internship offers, so then I had to decide what I wanted to do and during what time periods. So, I decided to take two different internships. I’m going to do one straight when I get back to Europe. They’re trying to develop balance by designing an app, so they need to collect a lot of data from people that experience balance. They’re putting a person on a force plate, connecting the person with a lot of sensors, and connecting the sensors to a computer, then you will get out different data, like the aspiration, displacement. From that, they’re going to try to build this app. The two main groups for data collection involve people who are retired and athletes.
[184-187] I’ll be responsible for collecting data. So, I’m going to put the sensors on the athletes, and then I’m going to record it, and then in Matlab I am going to retrieve the data, and by Matlab I will be able to see some aspiration, for example. So, it’s just data collection.
[189-195; 199-202] Then, the second internship is only a month long. So, after that I’m going to go back to my hometown, and then I’m going to work with a company which is trying to produce oil from trees. So, the main purpose of the company is to produce paper, but when they’re producing paper, they’re getting a lot of residual product, and so they will now try to come up with oil, so they can start selling oil as well. For this internship, I think I will have a really free role, they will just give me a task, like we need to make this production more cost effective then I’m just going to try to come up with a solution.
[138-145] After I completed the first internship, I started another internship that was related to chemistry more. The reason why I did that one, because it was near my hometown. So, I could stay get some experience or some money while I could be at home. We were going to find a new oil, but we take it from the trees, the rest of the product when you are producing paper. And with that can paint it on, on a regular sheet of paper, and that makes the paper water-resistant. So, let’s say that you’re having a moving box, or something like that, and you have the paint on it, it got produced that way. Then it can have it outside and then even though it’s raining and everything, the stuff inside it won’t get wet.
[153-155] The goal of the project was to determine what was the most efficient way to get this oil. So yeah, the oil is not finished or producible to use. We were working out parameters and supposed to consider the manufacturers.
[157-161] This internship was also a professional environment. The team I was working with have a higher education, a lot of experience in the chemistry field. The location the lab had everything we needed. Maybe it was very messy in the lab. It feels like the lab can become messy, because it’s a lot of stuff going on. That was maybe the only downside of it. That was not professional.
[165-166] I define a professional environment according to the people around you have a high understanding and knowledge of what’s going on, and also everything you need is available.
[87; 104-109] I didn’t have school in the summer. Instead, I had an internship in Northern Europe, which was about the data acquisition. My role involved testing athletes who came to our lab where we have some force plates under the different movements, like squats for example. By looking at the results from the force plates, we can determine how it’s using the right leg more than the left one. So maybe he’s going to have to do more weights on the left leg to be more stable to decrease that risk of injury.
[114-119] We used force plates, like this movements with a force plate, but also with an app that is supposed to do the same thing as a force plate, but obviously it doesn’t, because the force plate is much better. Here the results you got, but you were supposed to get this result, and fix yourself. I was not a part of making it better. I was just a part of collecting the data collection team.
[122-127] The team I was a part of were the test people, so that was a very, very professional environment. We were located in a gym, so it wasn’t very professional in that sense, but it was perfect enough for what we were going to do. And the main boss, he is skilled, very educated and very smart in that sense. But he wasn’t always there because I learned very quickly what I was supposed to do so then he could use his time to do something else.
(230; 501-502; 506) So I still don’t have a co-op. I actually have an interview today at 1:30, a phone interview at 1:30. I didn’t include it on the journey map, I forgot to. But part of that last up curve I’d say was procuring the phone interview I have today. Slightly nervous, very confident.
(259-262; 264-267) So with this one, this company that I am interviewing with today, they design and manufacture pipe fittings. And my dad was a sprinkler fitter for 35 years. And when I told him that I applied at this company, that they want to interview me, he said that he worked with their products. So that’s one thing that I will plan to be using as an “in” into the company, to say hey, I know your products are good, I have primary source knowledge of this, and I want to be a part of that process.
(106-111) I definitely am not ready to go into the workforce as an engineer. I would say I’m getting closer. This summer I’ll be going through my first co-op internship. So I think once that happens I’ll feel a lot closer because I’ll start to get work experience in. I feel very confident in my problem solving skills and my ability to work on a team. So in that sense of an engineer, I feel very confident.
(476-480) I was not very involved before I came to college. I never considered myself a leader. I considered myself a follower. But since I’ve come to school I think I’ve developed the leadership and communication skills necessary, not only to succeed in my field, but also to move forward in life and be able to interact with the people I meet in my daily life and in my professional life in a way that we can collaborate efficiently and cohesively.
[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.
[628-648; 729-742] There’s only so much self-repair you can do when you get knocked back down. It’s just the general feeling of anxiety in academics. If I don’t get this done, I’m going to work much harder later. The best way I can describe it is notice change and recognizing the change in behavior was how I get through difficulties.
The past four months have definitely been some of the biggest areas of growth that I’ve personally had in my life. I gained a lot of experience from the real world. I’ve had 12 jobs since 14, but none of them were engineering jobs. Having an engineering job allowed me to be used to professional. That taught me even if the concepts don’t apply, there is a baser reasoning to what I’m doing. I can look at a problem now and solve it without any help. If zero is not an engineer and 10 is an engineer, I put myself at six or seven. Purely because I don’t think getting out of school and getting an engineer job makes me an engineer. There’s an additional component that can only be found with experience and time. Getting the degree put me up from six or seven to an eight.
This afternoon, I’m updating my resume and choose where I want to go. As long as it fits their requirements that they lay out before me with time. My professor had to come visit the company I worked out for over the summer to see that I’m doing meaningful work and they’re taking care of me. I am still looking for an internship. Because my school is so involved in community, I can find a position that get me experiences that I need to achieve before I graduate.
[317-335] During winter break, I went home for Christmas, and was able to see my family. I felt happy with that. Then I was starting in a new job. The interesting thing about this job, last summer when I got my internship, I had applied to probably 20 or so places. That was the one place that gave me an offer. It wasn’t like my last choice. It ended up being really the perfect choice for me, it just fell into place. But this time around I knew I wanted to stay on campus. That limited my search to somewhere within 20 miles so that I didn’t want to commute very long every day from campus. I waited probably almost halfway through the semester just looking at places, thinking, “Would this be a good match? What do I want to do?” Then an opportunity opened up at a company that I knew about, but I forget what I thought they did. But it didn’t sound interesting. Then I was like, “Well, now I’m interested.”
I kind of put all my eggs in one basket. If at any point there’s a disclaimer you can put in, I would say, I don’t recommend that people do that. It’s very risky and I probably wouldn’t do it again. But I reached out to the company, I had contacts who were alumni. I went the extra mile and I wrote a cover letter, I got letters of recommendation if I needed them. I applied for only that job because it was the only job I wanted and it’s the job I got. I got really lucky there. Well, I guess not lucky, I guess, I earned what I got in my opinion. But that’s I think important as well.
[339-361] A professor that just retired from our school was actually an employee at the company at one point. I reached out to her and she gave me some tips and tricks, and she was happy for me. I had the people in the alumni department that hooked me up with someone in the company that would put in a good word for me. Those connections were good too. I think those resources were crucial in getting me in, getting my interview, and securing the position that I really wanted.
[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.
[16-24] Early on in the internship, I ended up getting sick and I had to go home. I ended up being out for a week with flu like symptoms. Then, I came back to work and I started to pick up and it was easier to do what I needed to do. Then, my grandmother passed away, which was a minor setback in the work place. I had to leave for a day to come home and take care of that. Then once I got back to work, I didn’t really have anything else going on. That learning curve was also starting to, like I said, level out. Work started to get easier and I started to enjoy it a lot more of the time. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it before, but it definitely, like I said, at points was frustrating. Then as the job got easier, I enjoyed it more.
[191-207] The learning curve began to level out because I kind of figuring out little tips and tricks. Just doing it, taught me how to do it. I don’t want to say I was very quick to go ask for help. Because I would look at a problem and I would try to fix it myself before I would ask and bother someone else and waste their time. But my mentors and co-workers were always there to help me when I needed it. If not right away, within 15, 20 minutes. I leaned on them, they came and helped me. Every time something went wrong, I’d fix it and then maybe a few days later I’d get the same problem and I’d be like, “I remember how to fix this now.” Everything started coming together.
It came together for me in two ways. The first way is that, obviously you have a powerhouse. I’m sure you can imagine there’re hundreds, thousands if not millions of components in that structure. There are a lot of parts to learn. As I’m learning more parts of the powerhouse, and I’m understanding the parts, it makes it easier for me to design it because I know what I’m looking for at the end. That came together, but also learning how to use the systems where we store drawings. Learning how to make a bill of materials. As I started to see how the systems integrated into each other, I was like, “Okay, because I’m putting this in this system, then it can show up here so that this department can know that they have to do X, Y, and Z.” It was all of those things kind of together and not one really outweighed the other. They all kind of just kind of worked at the same pace to get me to the point where I was.