I started my internship at SZOIL feeling quite nervous. I’d had three days to get situated in Shenzhen and explore the food and new culture. It was easier than I had thought to get comfortable with the large and different city, though the weather required a bit more effort. My excitement for experiencing life on my own and out of my comfort zone kept me from feeling thinking much about anything else.
When the weekend was over and I was finally making my way to where I’d be working for the next month, it sunk in slightly more that I was in a new country and was about to start working for a completely new company. In addition to this, I was going to completing certain project with people from possibly anywhere in the world. Though I had studied a relevant degree for around three years, I was still nervous that I’d not have enough knowledge and possibly encounter a not-so-helpful working team.
My first week at SZOIL proved to be one I would not regret being a part of. From the beginning, tasks were set to us new interns and we were given necessary starting packs to get to grips with the different projects we would be working on. As I expected, there would be a few things that temporarily stopped me from progressing with my assigned projects but conversations with the SZOIL team and with the other interns helped me to get to grips with everything.
One of the first things that I’d known about SZOIL was that it was a ‘maker’s space’ and that it targets the gap between small startup businesses and the large production ecosystem. In doing so, it promotes the picture of the city of Shenzhen with regards to digital intelligent hardware and manufacturing. Despite prior research, I was not entirely sure as to what to expect from such a description, but all my confusion went away when I started working. The projects that I worked on were requests from different clients and from here I began to understand the beauty of how SZOIL and it’s endeavours makes it so much easier for smaller businesses/ clients to get a standing in terms of product creation. The work required me to utilise different skills, some of which I was not the most comfortable with using. Over the course of the internship, I however realised my potential and that certain things simply require practise to start to get the hang of.
One project in particular that I worked on required me to piece many components together in order to build a Temperature and Humidity Sensor that would have such values for each displayed on an LCD screen. This project took me the most part of two weeks to complete and the fact that the SZOIL team was always ready to help with any issues I had definitely aided in the completion of the project.
In addition to projects, our team were responsible for holding workshops for visitors to SZOIL that were coming from different parts of the world. For instance, a 3D Printing Pen workshop was held to a group of thirty from abroad. The workshop involved explaining the benefits and uses of 3D printing, and demonstrations for using the pen. The final task in the workshop was to build a structure as structurally sound and light as possible within a limited amount of time. Despite the competitive nature of most of the participants, it resulted in being more fun than anything else! This was a great experience and temporary break from our projects that allowed me to also work on my communication skills between various people.
One of the things I wasn’t sure about when interning was whether my internship was going to be quite hands-on and whether it would allow me to feel like I was fully experiecing work in a new country. My curiosity only began to peak when us interns were given free reign from SZOIL to visit the infamous Huaqianbei and its Technology Market for design inspiration. It was something that I’d never experienced before and can say that I would probably not have been able to unless I came to China.
Seeing things from small electronic components to robot window cleaners was amazing and it was great to realise that anything could be built from all the components in all these massive buildings.
Other than the workshop at which I worked for the majority of the time was the Sinno-Finnish Deisgn Park. Here there were multiple different creations on display to the groups of people that came to SZOIL for tours. It was fascinating to come to the Park and see the fruition of quality designing that was made possible through SZOIL.
All in all, I had an experience better than I could have ever dreamed of working for SZOIL, and have to give a great thanks to the team for adding so much positivity to my first time working in Shenzhen. I left with the feeling that I would definitely be coming back soon, hopeful that I would able to step foot in such a great place more than once in my whole lifetime.
