Howdy! Summer is already well underway but it still feels like it’s just starting. Upon finishing my last final, I left the same day for a long plane ride back to Dallas and began preparing for my two interviews the following day. Shortly after boarding, however, the flight attendant came on over the intercom to let us know that DFW airport in Dallas was on lockdown due to multiple tornadoes touching down and that we would be stuck in the terminal for at least two hours. Well, I tried to get a little bit of shut-eye on the plane after checking on my parents and finally made it back home around 4:30am.
Promptly 5 and a half hours later, I sat in the first of my two interviews in the CEO’s office of Fluid Consulting, an IT consulting firm, discussing how we can design a mutually beneficial internship. A common problem when looking for an internship right after freshman year is finding a position where you can really help a company with a limited skill set (comparative to Juniors and Seniors of course) while still getting an experience that will help you decide where you want to be. What I found this year was that the best way to get around the limitation is to bring it up and show that I was dedicated to being just as much of an asset as the internship would be to me!
After that first interview, I headed off straight to my second one before crashing for a nice long nap to start off the summer! Just a few days later, I headed off with my mom, dad, and brother for Zurich, Switzerland for ten days of exploring the Bavarian cities and countryside. The trip was incredible:
We toured the new Mecedes-Benz museum
Jay Gatsby anyone?
Spent the night in a castle
Not quite Hogwarts, but still really cool!
Spent an evening in Hofbräuhaus
An authentic Bavarian biergarten
And saw the winter Olympic park from 1936 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Those slopes are steep!
After Germany, I began work at Fluid Consulting, and it’s been a roller coaster. My work has ranged all over the business. I’ve helped write quotes and handle the financial side of the business, taking logistics from first contact with a client all the way to ensuring the payment is handled and the relationship is established for future contracts with the client. On the other hand, I’ve written codes for automatically gathering information from internal servers for data analysis and I’ve gone out to client sites to help set up workstations and fix printers and even wall sockets. All in all, in just the short time that I’ve already worked this summer, I’ve been able to see a wide range of the IT consulting field and am beginning to find what it is that I like and don’t.
When I was applying for internships, it was tough going as a freshman and to make me feel better, I was often told that a freshman year internship is more about making a little bit of money but isn’t too helpful career-wise. While I agree that it isn’t absolutely necessary and summer school or other projects can serve a similar purpose, I think that every internship you can find will be just as helpful as a class! I’ve learned so much and gotten to see how computer science/engineering and business mix in the real world and I believe that the experience has and will continue to help me find my focus in school and beyond.
Until next time!
