Brendan Connelly
It’s hard to believe that I am more than halfway done with my internship at DoubleMap already. My name is Brendan Connelly, I am a Business Development Fellow here at DoubleMap, as well as a junior at DePauw University where I am majoring in computer science and minoring in business administration. In January I moved to Indianapolis to begin my semester of interning at DoubleMap for the Sales and Development teams. I have gained invaluable professional and life experience in the time that I have been at DoubleMap. I am currently five months into this internship and it has already shown a whole new perspective on the career path that I want to venture on after I graduate from college in a year, which was my ultimate goal prior to beginning.
I’ll admit, I was pretty nervous when I started my internship in January. I moved into a single bedroom apartment in bustling downtown Indianapolis, a drastic shift from the rural scenery of Greencastle, Indiana that I am accustomed to while at school; which was the first of many changes for me. Buying groceries, cooking every meal, and paying internet bills definitely were not a part of my previous daily activities as a college student last semester. It took a few weeks for the reality of the real world to set in and for me to realize that I no longer was a normal college student that could sleep for days at a time and procrastinate everything until the last minute. Instead, I was a 21 year old college kid that was working 40+ hours a week and walking to work in the city at 8:30 every morning, which subsequently has led to a serious caffeine addiction. Thankfully, this internship experience, both inside and out of the workplace, has forced me to grow up and mature in ways that I never could have imagined possible, which will only benefit me after college when I am tossed into the real world.
While living on my own has been a major catalyst for the growth that I have experienced during my time in Indianapolis, working at DoubleMap has also played a key factor. After hosting many interns before, DoubleMap has developed an internship system that allows for both the company and intern to benefit from the time spent together. Fortunately, I have been accompanied by two other DePauw juniors that are interning at DoubleMap during the semester and summer, which helped to bring a sense of normalcy to the once unfamiliar workplace. One of the most rewarding parts of this internship, which I believe my fellow interns would agree with, is that DoubleMap interns are given workloads that are made up of responsibilities that allow for direct impacts to be made on the company and its success. We are trusted with duties that require direct communication with clients and production of materials that current/potential clients see, which is almost unheard of for interns to do at larger companies. We are not looked upon as college interns, instead as another member of the team with an important job to do; which only helped contribute to my maturation while away from school.
DoubleMap ensures that their interns are receiving a valuable and worthwhile experience during the time that they are here. From the first day I started, I was constantly being asked what my career goals were and what I was interested in doing during my internship; in order to allow for my internship experience to be molded around my own personal interests. The fact that DoubleMap is a growing startup company was the exact reason that I wanted to complete my internship here; I knew that I would be given opportunities here that larger companies just simply can’t or won’t offer to interns.
Working full-time and living on my own in the real world for the past four months has certainly been a unique, yet valuable experience for my professional career and personal life. I still have two months remaining at DoubleMap, which makes me incredibly excited to see what further growth I can accomplish before my time is done here. When I am finished in August I will return to school as a normal college student once again, with senior year commencing the frantic pursuit of landing my first job following college. However, I am confident that I will be prepared to find a job and enter the real world due to the work experiences that I have acquired during this internship, all thanks to everyone at DoubleMap.
