By Rhiannon Thefaut, BA International Business Management
My internship was a learning experience. I hated it, but reflecting back, I learnt some really important lessons and developed as a person because of it. I’ve got a clearer idea now on how best I worked, what I wanted from a job and what I was and wasn’t interested in. Therefore, I recommend doing an internship, even if it’s not what you expect – because the lessons learnt are worth it and, honestly, the extra money is really helpful for third year when your maintenance loan lowers.
The first thing I learnt was that I did not want to work in Human Resources – until this internship, I was sure this was what I wanted to go into. However, after learning it was more about policies and following guidelines, rather than directly helping people, I decided it wasn’t interesting to me. The positive from this was that through my project on creating a tool to predict unplanned absence, I learnt I really enjoyed working with data. I’m now applying for master’s in data analysis and graduate jobs that directly involve looking at trends in data. This was probably the best thing that came out of my internship; it allowed me to see what areas I enjoyed working in a practical sense, rather than theoretical.
The second thing I learnt was that who you work with really makes the job – the people I worked with didn’t try to include me, help me or support me. I went to work and didn’t speak to anyone all day and then went to the flat I lived in alone to not speak to anyone some more. Looking back on it, I could have tried more to talk and be part of the HR team, however, as they didn’t try to include me, I didn’t have the confidence to put myself out there. I asked my manager for help 12 times, and each time got rejected and told she didn’t have time for me.
This links to the third thing I learnt – ask for help. If your manager won’t help you, ask someone else. If they can’t, ask another person. It felt so uncomfortable interrupting people who constantly complained how busy they were, but you’re not burdening them by asking – nearly everyone will be willing to help, or direct you to who can help.
My last piece of advice would be to think hard about whether it is worth doing an internship for the whole summer – when you’ve just been away from home for a year. I struggled with home sickness more during my internship, than my year abroad as I really wanted the time with my family after so long and didn’t have the chance.