I want to take the time to highlight and share the most important lessons I learned during my internship. This was my first internship I ever got and even though it was nothing I actually expected in the beginning, there is still something valuable I took from it. The overall experience was easy going and I felt very comfortable every time I was in the office. People were nice and there was no stress at all.

As I said in an earlier post, I applied to many internships and got few replies back. Unfortunately, many of them are looking for interns just because they need help with things they don’t know how to do it. One of the main points of getting an internship is to be mentored by a professional, work in an environment similar to what you are expecting to work in the future. I can’t stress this enough, but my first mistake was to apply blindly. DO YOUR RESEARCH. If you don’t know who the company is, what they do, if they have the knowledge you want and need to acquire in order to take you to your next professional level, you might get surprises and disappointments once you get to the place. Doing some research before you even apply, will save you time.

Being organized impacts tremendously on everything you do. Since the first time I got into the internship I realized that my supervisor was very unorganized and forgetful.  We would spend almost hours trying to find passwords and important information. I often had to call the hosting companies to help me log into her accounts. Her previous interns had made them websites that were not responsive and very unorganized as well. I spent weeks trying to design and think about content, and site hierarchy before I realized she already had different websites. Instead of creating one from scratch I decided to modify one that was already done in Wix. I took out all the content but left the same deign, that saved me a lot of time. It’s important to keep track of what you have, have folders for different types of files, know where passwords and usernames are, etc.

Due to the disorganization in the office, many tasks took a long time to complete. Another important thing to consider when being in an internship is being able to prioritize assignments. If you try to take in different assignments at the same time you can get overwhelmed. Also, if you start doing something, and then start doing something else without completing the first one, and then you got distracted with a third task, you will forget about the first tasks, or you won’t be able to focus on them and  do it right. Many times I forgot to complete some tasks because Sarah wanted me to do something else, until the next week when she reminds me to finish something.

The last two things I want to highlight are: Be willing to do more things than you expect, and have a good attitude because there is always something positive you can take from something negative. There are going to be times they will need help with other, and you should be able to help. I helped Sarah many times with her computer, with files, finding information, and more. Patience is something I acquired during the internship.