I hope everyone is enjoying their summer break! Whether you spent your summer working, at summer school, travelling, or just hanging out at home, it’s nice to have a break from exams and projects for a little while.
a night out in hollywood
I’ve spent most of my summer working as a Project Engineer Intern at one of MATT Construction’s project sites located in North Hollywood, and it has been the most incredible experience. While I am declared Environmental, I am still on the Civil/Environmental track so I took this internship to learn more about civil engineering and its role in the construction industry. Coming into this internship after only one year of college experience, I had zero knowledge of the construction industry and had to be walked through everything. It has been challenging, but learning all of this stuff hands-on has made it so much more interesting and real. Someone isn’t just showing me in a classroom, I’m actually watching it happen in real time (which is super cool).
Working for MATT has been a dream because all of their projects are really cool and every one is incredibly unique and different. Some of MATT’s projects that you may have seen on or near campus are the USC Caruso Catholic Center, USC Mudd Hall, USC School of Cinematic Arts, USC Data Center, USC Watt Hall, and currently MATT is working on the USC Raulston building remodel on the Health Sciences Campus and the brand new USC Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center which will be housing the new dance school. Recently, all of the interns toured the Glorya Kaufman jobsite, and it’s going to be amazing! Even though my internship will end in a few weeks, I can’t wait to watch this building come together while I’m at school.
Intern Day – visiting the USC Glorya Kaufman jobsite!
While I’m not working on a USC project, I am working on something else really cool, the Television Academy Theater and Media Center in North Hollywood. Because this is where countless movie and television show premieres will be held, this building has a lot of cool features that you don’t typically deal with in the average construction project. There are special accommodations that need to be made for a red carpet in front of the building, huge Emmy statues that go outside and inside the theater, and an enormous screen to go into the theater (a room that spans from the basement to the ceiling of the 2nd floor). The building has a green room, a control room, and huge glass walls on the outside. When I first arrived to the project, the theater was pretty much just a steel structure with no walls or roof or floors, and now as I near the end of my internship, all of the walls are up, and the concrete for the roof and the floors have been poured. It’s been really exciting to see all of the moving parts that coordinate to make this amazing building happen.
what my project will look like when it’s finished
I have learned so much from my internship. I had basically no technical knowledge or skills when I started and now I know so much. MATT has also helped me develop my soft skills (which I learned can be just as important as technical skills) through their biweekly staff meetings where each project has to present about something interesting on their jobsite. The presenters are scored on their presentations and first place wins a prize for their team, so there is an incentive to give a quality presentation. Not to brag, but I got first place in my first presentation and second place in the one after that (first place went to a project engineer, so I still beat all of the interns)! I also met a lot of great people at MATT and made friends with all of the interns!
Intern Bonding at a Dodgers Game!
This summer has definitely been one for the books. Living and working in Hollywood has been such a cool experience, and MATT is an awesome company to work for. My internship has been AMAZING, but I am starting to seriously miss SC and can’t wait to start the fall semester!
If you want to know more about MATT, general contracting and construction, or anything else about my summer, feel free to ask!
Oh yeah, I also jumped out of a plane
