Welp, here goes my first post.
This is something I’ve been thinking of doing for some time now, and it just happens to be the perfect opportunity. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I’m starting a new chapter in my life. For the next 16 months, I’ll be on internship, hopefully travelling the world and experiencing as much as I can.
The focus of these 16 months is my technical and professional development. I’ve come to the realization that there are a lot of paths ahead of me. From Biomedical Engineering, Bioinformatics, to Software Engineering and Data Science, my degree offers me a lot of room to explore and create. All of these paths are things that can lead to fulfillment (whatever that means), providing me with a way I can make a real impact on issues I care about.
The problem right now is that I can see myself doing all of those. I can see myself reviewing tickets as a Software Engineer over a morning cup of joe. I can see myself reviewing the latest patient data and looking for ways to use that insight to lower costs for drug discovery. I can even see myself starting my own company to tackle some of the most pressing issues in energy, accessibility, and poverty. With all of these options still open to me, it often gets overwhelming. I find myself stressing about getting the best opportunity RIGHT NOW, worrying about whether I’m doing enough, and whether I’m closing any doors for the future.
Sometimes this comes in the form of doubting whether what I’m doing right now is even worth my time. Maybe I won’t even like engineering. Maybe I’ll look back at these 16 months and regret everything, hate my time as a Software Engineer, and wish I had just graduated school to go on to a PhD or Med school.
Other times, it comes in the form of comparing myself to others. Well, I wanna do THIS but people who have done THIS did it way earlier than I did, and they got to where they were way quicker. Or that even though I’m putting in so much work, it seems like it’s not getting rewarded by opportunities or accomplishments.
Or maybe, that’s the wrong way to think about it. Maybe it’s not a problem to have so much ahead of me. Maybe I need to start thinking about how to make the most out of the opportunities I have right now. Focusing on the journey rather than the destination sounds like another cliché, but really it’s essential if you’re ever going to enjoy where you are.
So my message to myself, and for anyone else starting these 16 months, is to really start taking opportunities everywhere you can get them, and to make your focus more micro-oriented. Try and focus on what you can do to the be the best you RIGHT NOW, and not focusing on what you need to be doing 10 years in the future. You don’t have everything figured out yet. And that’s okay. But you being the best you right now sure as hell won’t close any of the doors you long to keep open.
With that being said, here are some actionable, micro-oriented pieces of advice I want to keep myself accountable to. These are gems collected from my friends around me who have interned before, people I’ve met on coffee chats, countless hours on blogs, Medium, and a wide variety of podcasts. Thanks to everyone who keeps inspiring me!
My 5 tips on starting your internship off on the right foot
- Keep asking questions.
Something I’ve been afraid of for a long time is asking too many questions. Everyone always tells you to ask as much as you need, lest you waste 3 hrs on something that could’ve taken 3 minutes with the proper guidance. But how do you get over that fear of asking too many questions? What if you’re just constantly asking things and it seems like you can’t do anything yourself? Well, simply put, if you get to that point, whoever you’re asking will tell you. And that’s fine. It’s okay that you got to that point. They’ll respectfully tell you that they think you should be able to go figure it out yourself. And guess what? That’s exactly what you’ll then go do. Don’t stress out about something that won’t affect you for more than the 5 seconds you’ll spend being embarrassed. - Put in the extra work.
As the intern at the office, you might notice that you have to put in more hours than the full-timers into performing your job. You might have to learn an entirely new programming language from scratch just to get caught up on your latest assignment. That’s okay. You’re here to intern and learn, aren’t you? So do some learning. Those guys got into their positions and they’re at a point where they’re comfortable now in their role. That’s not supposed to be the case for you, especially if you’re only there for 4 months. Don’t feel bad because you have a little catching up to do, it just means you get to walk away with more at the end of the day! - Be uncomfortable.
Remember those guys who are comfortable? Yeah, you’re not them. You shouldn’t be comfortable during your internship. You should keep putting yourself in situations that force you out of your comfort zone. It’s the same thing with senior-itis in high school, or why you wanted to go on internship in the first place. Eventually, you get settled into a routine of normalcy, and you stop growing. It happened before, where you felt like you just couldn’t get anything else out of your opportunity than you had already gotten. Don’t let that happen on internship. Keep going on coffee chats, asking to be put on that cool project, or stopping by someone’s office to ask how they got there. You’re only there for 4 months, what’s the worst that can happen? (Little bit of a disclaimer, now obviously if you feel any real physical discomfort or uncomfortable with how you’re being treated, you should bring that up as soon as you can, make sure to know your boundaries). - You get what you think you deserve.
This has been proven to me countless times over, and it really goes to show that no one’s looking out for you more than you’re looking out for yourself. Whether it’s as simple as asking to be put on a project you think aligns perfectly with your interests, or asking for that hardware upgrade, you never really know how willing people are to help you out until you ask. A small anecdote from one of my friends exemplifies this. She was one of the few interns at her research lab, and didn’t have a workstation. One day, she saw one of the iMac stations empty, complete with a 12th story view of the city. She asked her boss if she could use the workstation, and her boss said no one else was assigned to it in the summer, and that she could have it all to herself! At the end of the day, if you don’t think you deserve something, no one else will either. Just go ask for it! - Show up early for everything.
Yeah, this goes for your first day too. Stay longer at the office than anyone else, coming in earlier and leaving later. What’s the point, you might ask? Well, worst case, you just seem like you’re a pretty dedicated and timely guy. Best case? You might run into some opportunities you’d never have stumbled across unless you were there. People underestimate how many things are just a result of you being at the right place at the right time. What if you meet that person that could be instrumental in finding your next job, or you get to have an extra five minutes to talk to your manager about a cool idea for a feature to the product you’re working on? Sometimes it’s not always planned in a meeting slot. Sometimes it happens just because you’re there. So be there.
Those are my tips for anyone starting their internship journey (mostly to myself to keep myself accountable to all the things I want to accomplish and live by). Hope it comes in handy for some of you reading it. For everyone who’s read this far, thanks for considering what I have to say! I hope to be able to update this mini-series with my adventures as an intern over the next 16 months. Keep updated for more posts.
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Keep achieving, keep being curious, keep learning, and keep grinding.
