My Experience of Interning at a Start-up
In many colleges and universities of the engineering domain, industrial internships have been made a compulsory part of the student's curriculum. The colleges are right in their perspective that the students will gain practical knowledge before they step out into the real world after placements. However, this leaves the students haphazardly searching for internships, just for the sake of completing their curriculum.
The same is the case in my college where an industrial internship of a minimum of 4 weeks is compulsory and needless to say, the same was my and my friends’ situation. We were searching far and wide and applying to any company we found offering internships on LinkedIn, AngelList, Internshala, etc.
As I was also randomly applying to various listings on LinkedIn, I stumbled across a start-up, mewt. The job role suited my interests and so I applied, though I had no idea whether I would even get a reply. Anyway, I got a reply with an interview scheduled. The interview ended with a task given to me, to make a Django login page and share the code. With the successful submission of this code, started my short journey of being a part of a start-up.
In the two months as an intern at Mewt, I have learned a lot, way more than I had imagined. The biggest advantage being, in my opinion, is that I was not just a mere intern with some specific tasks kept aside for me, but a part of the team. I could see my work have a direct impact and that made me appreciate what I did even more.
I have been given quite a few varieties of tasks for software development, from basic table creation in Django to information extraction using OCR to email scraping. In the beginning, I was given small tasks like creating tables and functions to insert and retrieve information from those tables in the Django framework. These are pretty simple, but given that I had only basic and theoretical knowledge about Django, it took me more time than would be expected. Then, as time passed, more tasks were given, some relating to core Python, some dealing with JSON files, some with more Django frameworks, etc.
Managing both college and internship together is a bit stressful, though given that I have never been given hard deadlines. So, even with college assignments being a priority, I never feel forced to complete my internship tasks and I sit to work on them whenever I get time. I realized that being a part of start-up companies helps us gain a lot of practical knowledge by application. My basics in many fields have been cleared, not through some courses, or books, but by working to achieve deliverables.
Another good experience of interning at a start-up is the amount of individual attention that we get. I have had hour-long calls understanding the flow of the app. I have been explained many times what processes are followed while taking different requests from users. Even if my mentors did not take out time to explain all this to me, I would still have done the tasks given, but knowing all this helps brainstorm and motivates me because I know the impact my work will create.
There have also been times during the internship when I think that I can’t manage both college and internship, but the friendly and accommodating environment makes sure that I don’t leave the internship mid-way. I think even if the workload might increase, and we might get less free time, but if we want to gain some practical real-life experience, being a part of a start-up can help us reach the same level much faster when compared to being a part of an established company.
