Staying Afloat With Your Internship
I remember walking into mPharma for the first time as a graduate intern. I had heard so much about the company and how only senior engineers are hired into the engineering team. As a fresh graduate with no solid background, I felt like a small fish in a big pond. I was extremely scared but excited at the same time to work with great minds and learn from them.
Today, I am even more grateful that I made this choice and that they also made the choice of hiring me as their first national service personnel in the engineering team. I have decided to share some pointers that helped me a great deal at that period of my life.
Stay humble and teachable
Being an intern is a gift! No one expects you to know it all so don’t show off. Rather be honest with your level of understanding and show that you are genuinely improving over the period. Being honest with your level of understanding helps you further ascertain which areas you need to work on.
Get a mentor
One of the things that really saved and continue to save me in this tech journey is the fact that I have a mentor. You can’t know and grow all by yourself. Good for you, you find yourself in a space filled with people who have gone ahead of you and are where you would want to be in some months or years to come, so, submit yourself to mentorship. Some companies may provide you with a mentor and that is great. But if they don’t, do well to wisely choose a mentor preferably from the company, since they are closer, and will look out for you and be genuinely concerned about your growth.
Be hungry to learn
Now that you have a mentor, make use of this opportunity. Be hungry and show your hunger for growth and learning. There is no point in having a mentor when there is no structured learning; when you are not putting your mentor to effective use. She/He may have a lot to do and may even genuinely forget you exist so behoves you to try to stay in touch. Ask questions, create a meeting schedule, ask them to teach you some topics you are finding difficult to grasp. One other thing I learnt getting to the end of my internship period — ask for a performance review!
Unlike me, don’t wait till you are getting to the end of your internship before you ask for a review. Ask for it regularly. This is not only restricted to mentors but your managers and even team members. This act will help you have a clear understanding of where you need to put in more work to improve. You never stop learning in this field so you better embrace the habit of always staying hungry.
Challenge yourself — Build projects
In engineering, you can only really feel confident through practice - learn by building new things. Don’t get stuck in the tutorial hell. Build something no matter the level of understanding you may think you have. You can bring your mentor along on this journey because you would definitely feel stuck one way or the other.
I see coding as an art (coding is actually an art). Writing code that only works and cannot be understood by others is not good enough. You need to learn to improve your coding craft in either way:
- Pair coding with more experienced engineers
- Reading code. I read code written by other engineers to try to understand certain choices they made. This helps me because I get to pick up some tricks as I also try to find alternatives to solve problems.
Ask for help
Google is and will continue to be your great friend but sometimes, you will require someone to explain something to you. Perhaps, help you complete a task you have been assigned. Don’t be proud to ask for help.
Before then, make sure:
- You understand the problem you are trying to solve. If not, speak to the manager or whoever assigned you the task to help you understand.
- Attempt to solve the problem. Sometimes, things are not as difficult as they seem. Try to break down the problems and attempt to solve them.
Then you can ask someone else on your team, however, be patient when they don’t respond immediately. They may also have other things to work on. Present your problem and your approach to solving it. Don’t be afraid or proud to ask for help. Fun fact, everyone asks for help sometimes.
Conclusion
Every senior engineer has been where you find yourself right now. Everyone started from somewhere. Some days can be overwhelming because even though you may not know much, a lot will be required from you. See this as an opportunity to grow and make use of all the resources you have available to you. Remember, what stands between where you are now and becoming a better engineer, is resilience and consistency. When this period is over, I hope you pride yourself on your achievements.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
