We all went into our internships knowing what the overall aim was - being to develop our professional skills and prepare us for a career in the 'real world'. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the experience has done more than improve our skills, but instead has improved our overall confidence in a way that never would have been possible in-side a classroom.
Granted we do work in teams for assignments, and we know how to interpret a brief and work toward an end product or goal. But the variety of jobs we undertook and the initiative we had no choice but to develop and use showed us that, combined with the theoretical knowledge we gained during our studies, we are more capable than we thought.
Jobs I had never done before, and as such had no plan to follow or experience to derive information from, forced me to think critically, research, analyse and formulate a working style that allowed me to get the job done. For example writing for someone other than myself was challenging, but had I never done so before entering the workforce, I wouldn't have developed the skills or work ethic that are now so valuable to me.
Some days I would come into the workplace and my supervisor would have new jobs for me that hadn't been previously set out in my brief, forcing me to think on my feet and work effectively - previously a weakness of mine.
Working on jobs outside my industry or typical job description also helped me feel confident taking on jobs I wasn't normally used to or comfortable with. E.g. researching/tracking down tech equipment for the business and photography.
And of course no internship would be complete without its fair share of 'crappy jobs' as my supervisor liked to call them - which included invoicing for two of her three businesses.
Interning definitely exceeded my expectations and benefited me in more ways than I anticipated, how about you?
Thanks for reading!
Bianca
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