Internship advice

I'm going to do a few posts to provide advice for interns. I really struggled when I first got my internship with all sorts of questions. This is certainly natural: most minimum wage jobs and academic settings are a completely different work paradigm than an office job or internship.

These posts will provide some basic advice for interns, from starting out to finishing up.

These are a few key approaches to be an amazing intern.

Attitude: Interview

Your internship is really just a very long interview. Receiving an internship is just getting your foot in the door; you still have to continue to be an amazing potential employee. You haven't made it in yet. While you should be proud of landing the internship, you should realize that this is just the first step to making a good impression at the company and with your supervisor. Even if it seems that you will be likely give the job, look further: you can still see this as an interview for the next job that you apply for or the promotion that you will want.

Much like an interview, every day you should be on your best behavior, looking out for pitfalls and opportunities.

Thank you letters

Gratitude is an amazing thing to demonstrate. People are always happy to help someone who take the time to pat them on the back and return that help. Especially in well established companies and those jobs that gave you your first experience, gratitude for the opportunity to work is expected.

Write thank you letters for being interviewed, for recommendation letters, for being mentored, for the opportunity to work. If you can, give back some sort of value to the person who helped you. This could be sharing a bright idea that they inspired, pointing out an opportunity for funding, or offering to put them in contact with a professor at your school who you think they would get along with. They helped you so you should do your best to help them.

Don't discount what you can do to help them! These small acts coming from you now will signal how truly motivated you are and that you will be an important professional connection.

Thank you letters should be well written in content and put on nice stationary. An email will not cut it.

Proofread and Perfect

When you first get an assignment, ask questions about it. Try and get a sense not only of what you are asked to do, but why and what your supervisor truly wants. Don't pretend like you know what you're doing. It's better to ask questions than make mistakes.



Here are some useful questions:

Basic details

• Would you like this saved as a pdf or word document? 
• Should I print this in color? 
• Who should I copy on this email?
• When do you want this by? 

Conceptual questions

• What is the target audience of this project/publication?
• What is the goal of this project/publication?
• Do you have an previous examples?
• How was this program developed?
• What is the latest innovation for this program?

Work quickly and efficiently but make sure to keep up the quality of your work. Proof read everything you do. The best way I've found to proof read is to print out everything and read what I've written multiple times.

Share ideas and innovation

Having asked meaningful questions about the project, think about the project. How would you run this project? What could be added to the project? Where would there be problems?

Once you know what is wanted of you and what is being asked of you, do both and add your own spin to it. If you can, add some sort of innovation to the task. Are you making an event program from Word document? Make the program in Publisher; explain to your supervisor that it will be easier to print. Create several designs for the event program, designs that fit with the feeling the event is going for. Do everything you can to make a perfect product.

I also ask other coworkers to look things over or bounce ideas before speaking to my supervisor. This shows initiative and, when I credit the coworker for sharing their idea, humility and good teamwork.

The point

You are you. You can do a lot to become a better worker. But to be a truly excellent intern, you need to show yourself as an excellent worker and as someone who can add to the company.

What you add is about who you are.


If you're an amazing social butterfly and spend tons of hours running events for your sorority, take that to your job. Be Elle Woods. If you're a quiet dreamer with tons of ideas, work them over in your mind and then share them. Take your inspiration from the imagination and rectitude of Tesla.  If your social skills are so so, but you love the technical side of things find an office that understands this, find a task where you technical skills can shine as you work independently, find your niche.

You can't be happy constantly changing who you are; you can't be a good worker if you hide your best aspects.

Motivate Yourself: What is Work?

I think we all have days where we just can't do any work.

But that doesn't mean that day is a loss. Sometimes you can trick yourself into getting "work" done. Other times you just need to realize how much work you're already doing.

I'll share a few tricks for getting yourself into getting stuff done when your body just won't cooperate.

Set the mood

Often the reason I can't get work done is because of a bad or lazy mood. To deal with a lack of motivation, let's first qualify what it means to get work done. There are all sorts of tasks that need to get done in a day. Some of them are chores; others are complex creative tasks; others are matters of routine. Some relaxing but necessary tasks we don't even consider when making our to-do lists: showering, eating, cooking, taking a moment for breathing. But all of these things need to happen in a day.

It seems ridiculous to de-value the things that have to get done. Without going grocery shopping and cooking food, you'd starve. Shouldn't that make those tasks the most important part of your day?

Do chores

I find that the reason I can't focus on a large academic "important" task is because I've allowed too many of these "little" chores pile up. In that sense too we can see that everyday chores are important and part of getting work done. Without keeping up on chores and self-care, we can lose our motivation for larger tasks.

Try out these physical chores with the intended mental goals in mind.

• Cleaning your room
• Refocus and de-clutter your mind
• Open up your windows to let in sunlight
• Brighten your outlook
• Wash and dry dishes
• Drift on what you need to do
• Throw away old lists and papers
• Prioritize the things left 
• Empty the trash can
• Let go of baggage
• Do laundry
• Focus and pacing

Pacing

Work is not sitting in one place for hours and hours. The Social Network might show us people "plugging in" for hours at a time, but most people don't work this way. The human body isn't designed to sit in one place for a long time; cramped and tired out is usually the end result of this type of studying and work. So don't study in a way that physically saps motivation and sets you up to fail!

Study to your body's needs and personal habits

Most people can only concentrate on a task for 45 minutes which is about the time a load of laundry takes. After a block of time concentrating, take a break to do a physical activity to pump your body back up and keep yourself from getting tired. This will help your motivation.

Staying positive: Lookin' Good

I've realized that a major part of me feeling good about myself is based on feeling that I look good. This spring and summer, my goal is work a routine of healthy self care and trying out a new more outgoing personal style.



Read more to hear about my rationale for this new commitment and the steps that I've broken this major goal down into.




I was raised on the belief that "cleanliness is close to godliness" and that "your body is a temple," so I associate taking care of my body with taking care of my soul. I may not be as spiritual, but the feeling of being clean is still linked with a sense of personal peace and reflection for me. I often spend my shower planning out my day or revving myself up for class.

Looking back on my low points, I see that personal care is one of the first things that I cut out. The sad thing is that removing self care makes it difficult for me to go out and leads to debilitating self criticism. While the first thing to go, self care certainly isn't the last. Cutting down on self care is a rather common thing for people suffering from depression or even just general stress. If you struggle with this, there's a lot of support out there. Even if it's not part of a serious difficulty, it's easy to rationalize exchanging showering time for cramming for a test. Maybe we can challenge ourselves to take better care together!

This year, I made a commitment to improving myself and I catalogued those resolutions in my day planner.
( Read my improvement commitments here.)

I want to commit to looking nice, taking care of my appearance, so that I can tackle the world with a more outgoing personality.

• My goal is to shower daily, taking the time to shampoo, condition, exfoliate, and just enjoy the process of getting clean.
• I will try to do my hair well, so that I feel confident with it. 
• I want to wear make up on a regular basis rather than "giving up" on my appearance. 
• My outfits will be things I confidently enjoy rather than things that let me feel slouchy-comfortable. 
• I will take advantage of my clothes and jewelry that I own. 
• I should try to feel brave and adventurous trying out new clothes, rather than cautious. 

Day Planner

After going to the comic book shop with a friend, we wandered around a bit. And being the person that I am, I couldn't resist a little stationary kitsch shop.

It had so many cute things to pick up and explore. I was thinking of getting myself a nice soap but then realized I have enough soap for a small eternity, all of it lavender scented too.

Isn't the planner just lovely? I love that the cover is of vintage Boston. It has a bit of elastic to hold the cover closed along with ribbon to keep the page.

The front page has personal information; the next spread is monthly views and holidays.
I got myself a planner for new year of 2013 so to fully dedicate it in the back are my new year's resolutions. It has a great pocket in the back. I use it to store the letters that I'm about to post.

Set up with with a view of the week on one page and a note sheet for lists, this little planner has been helping me get organized. I use stickers to spark up the pages for my routine events and even for reminders of small inspirations. I put in my plans for IAP. I also put in some surprise plans throughout the year, complete with stickers. I think it's very important to have little things sprinkled throughout the year to keep oneself from losing sight of the small joys.

My one warning would be that it doesn't have a full spread monthly view.  For each week, there is a mini month view. That's alright for me since I have a monthly wall calendar along with a cell phone app calendar.

Hope that this little book can keep me organized throughout the year! I do really hope it does; as you can see I'm trying to improve myself a bit in 2013.
How do you keep organized? I enjoyed reading the Dainty Squid's post about planning blog posts.

Vlog

Good Morning!

Started my wake up routine with a cup of water and a plan for the day. For breakfast, I had some bread with Nutella with some tea wake up fully.

I recorded a vlog last night and am currently editing it. I had the brilliant idea of using the camera that our dorm uses for i3 videos since it's an HD camera. Super happy to be able to bring some high quality video without having to lay out the cash for a new camera. The new vlog's about cute electronic accessories. I should post the video on the 8th along with a related blog post. Please look forward to it!


Progress shots of the related illustration that I did!