Part I:
Throughout my internship, I have been measuring my success by looking at how I'm able to impact the work space around me. It can been anything from, getting to know new co-workers (there are around 300 people in the office so it it like getting to know everyone at High Tech again), or asking people if they need help with anything when I'm not super busy. I am also judging it by the connections that I am making. My mentor has told me multiple times that opportunities like these you; need to take full advantage of and use the time to network. Get your name out there, create relationships where people would recommend you to others, based off of your first impressions. At first trying to figure out what I would be doing for a project was a nightmare, this was because we had so many ideas on the drawing board but nothing was concise. This resulted in multiple meetings and a presentations to get the kinks out of the project launch. After launching the project I had little to no time to focus on anything else but my project this is mainly due to the fact that each week I am suppose to launch a new project and finish it by the end of the week. This resulted in me having less time to shadow the different departments within the building. But overall I have been able to stay busy and I've worked hard enough to be able to shadow the UAV department (it's a team of guys that work on drones and they fly them to survey land for clients. They also showed me the FPV (First Person View) drones which was pretty cool). I am thankful for this experience because I was able to see how a team of people that had no college education in drone flying, were able to all work together to create awesome projects that benefit the company. Part II: Something that I was able to see while shadowing the UAV team was to never give up on having your inner kid. the main person I shadowed was Chris and he told me how he was so passionate about RC vehicles since he was a child. This made me feel more comfortable in the work space because lately I have been having a hard time deciding on what I want to spend the rest of my life working as, and Chris was able to give me valuable information. It is to find your passion and pursue it. Never give up on it no matter what anyone tells you, because the day that you lose your passion is the day you lose your "inner kid". This resonates deep with me, mainly because I am the last child in my family to grow up and I will be the first to go to a university. The pressure is so immense and my family wants me to succeed so bad that it is becoming easier to lose my passions, because I am focusing so hard on "What job makes the most money" or "What would make everyone proud". I feel that throughout my internship I have been able to ask so many valuable questions and meet so many inspiring people. The best piece of information I can take away is that growing up is hard and a lot of things can go wrong. But no matter what I need to push through, there are people in my life that will be able to back me up so the sky is the limit for me.
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My work space, throughout the weeks this is where almost all of my work occurred. Progress on making my first prototype for my initial bridge design. (Every time I cut balsa wood I can slowly feel the arthritis growing in my finger joints) The outside of the office I work in. (It is currently the biggest office that the company owns) AutoCAD draft of my bridge design; everything in the image is to scale of the real model.
So far in my internship I have not used self advocacy that much. This is mainly because I am not learning anything that is extremely hard yet. Sometimes I will have questions about how to build my bridge model but other than that I have just been busy doing my work. But in the next few weeks I am sure to be using self advocacy, this is because I will be learning how to use autoCAD and I don't expect to know everything. For this I will have to be constantly talking to my team of mentors for help when I need it. Also every week on Monday at 9:00 am, we have a team meeting discussing the work that needs to be done by the end of the week and what we need help finishing. I will be utilizing this time in the next two weeks to ask clarifying questions.
I have been extremely busy all the time while I am here so I don't have time to be reading through "How to be an intern everyone remembers", but that doesn't mean that I am not being friendly and trying to socialize and get to know the people around me. Throughout the next weeks I will be shadowing people within the different departments of the company. I have already used this time to get to know who I am interning for and asking many questions. I stay engaged with the work that is being presented to me and when I can I try to converse with the person I am shadowing so I can establish a better relationship. But overall I feel like I have been leaving a good impression on my mentors, colleagues, and other interns in the building. Initially when I had started my internship my mentors and I had no real idea of what I would be doing while I was interning. This was due to being accepted for the internship program on such short notice. But after the first few days we made a plan of what I was expected to finish by the end of my internship. In my first week I was suppose to collaborate with my mentors to come up with a solid idea for a product and plan out what each and every week is expected to look like. Also while doing this I was given the opportunity to be able to shadow different departments within the building. My second week of internship I will be creating a model bridge out of balsa wood, and learn more about how bridges actually work from civil and structural engineers. Throughout this week I will need to communicate thoroughly with my mentors to ensure that my model is finished. For my third week of the internship I will be creating an CAD model of my bridge. This week is mainly for me to understand how these different software work; this week may also end up taking the rest of my fourth weeks time due to the learning curve that comes with the software. If I have enough time in my fourth and final week of internship I will be creating a 3D model of the bridge in SketchUp and also implementing the bridge into Photoshop. The last assignment for the final week will be presenting all of my work to my mentors, colleagues, and internship teacher. Overall I am excited to start working on creating my project, but I'm afraid I might not have enough time because the last week flew by extremely fast, this is mainly due to me working four times a week for seven and a half hours a day.
For the next three weeks I will need to be constantly communicating with my mentors for help, this skill will need to be improved for the rest of my time here mainly because all of the work that I am doing is independent. This is because my mentors are extremely busy and have limited time in the week to be teaching me. Another skill that I am going to find important is being organized, I have little time to complete my projects and if any of the work gets lost I won't have enough time to start over. So it is critical that I keep all of my resources in check. What should I know about you before you started working here?
"I grew up... I grew up in Moscow as a small child and then moved to New Jersey with my parents. I was too young to really remember anything about what was happening while living in Moscow. There's a lot of details in between that would take forever to write down. Originally I wanted to study psychology and then I realized that, that wouldn't work so I turned to my other interest which lead to me studying landscape architecture and one thing lead to another and now I work here." What is your job title? "I am a Landscape Architect. A landscape Architect designs the built environments like, parks, gardens, and the plant life outside of buildings. I also work very closely with Civil Engineers." How did you end up doing the job that you do? "I was working for an architect a while back that was building my Aunt and Uncles house. I continued to work under him for a while and eventually ran into my professor from college who guided me toward a firm called RBA. RBA was bought out by NV5 and I moved out to California to start working." Is there anything that you wish you knew about the world of work when you were my age? "Yeah a lot... Working is not as fun as you think it will be when you are younger. Sure you can like what you do but work is work. There is always something that you aren't going to like about what you are doing and you are just going to have to push ahead because, that is what growing up is all about. I would have also liked to know about how much college really costs because, high school students are fed a lot of bullshit about college. A lot isn't shared and eventually you graduate college and you are knee deep in debt and it sucks. I graduated with 35,000 dollars in dept which when compared to the average American isn't that bad. But I decided to travel for 6 months of my life which also meant I wasn't working and the interest that compiled has made me now pay around another 2-3 thousand dollars. Also by the time you have actually finished paying your debt you will have payed an additional amount of money (depending on what kind of degree you got) and that is something that I never got to know about. Back to when I was traveling; when I was in Europe and I was talking about how much in debt I was to the people, they were astounded by the numbers. That's because college in Europe is so much cheaper in the U.S. Overall these are some of the things that I wish someone had told me about." What is the purpose of this organization? "The purpose of NV5 is to improve the lives of all people (since it's a international company) by improving the built environment." What questions did I not ask that I should have? None... The questions were good and I look forward to talking more about these kinds of questions." Reflection: After talking to my mentor more and more throughout the week I have been able to reduce my anxiety of being in the workplace. I have also been able to see that everyone who seems busy or serious in the workplace is really nice and that they are all human just like me. I still have some questions that I would have liked to ask my mentor mainly to create a better relationship between the both of us but, I feel like doing interviews like this is a good way to get to know someone and there was some stuff that I didn't write (Due to confidentiality reasons) that really interested me about my mentor and I would like to set a time aside or a lunch break where I can ask him more about himself and allow him to ask more about me." Boy was the "Office" and "Parks and Recreation" wrong. Not once have I seen anyone in the office try and do parkour yet and there is no miniature horse anywhere in sight.
My first day in my new workplace at NV5 has been amazing so far, the building itself has so many departments and includes just about everything a engineering firm could have. Along with that everyone in the workplace is friendly and they are happy to see me interning at NV5. Something that has surprised me about my colleagues here at NV5 is that first, there is a mix of people in the office and that everyone here is friendly and professional. Secondly there isn't only civil engineers inside the building, since the building consists of so many different departments that requires a wide range of people that specialize in those specific departments. This to me is so interesting to see how one company can have all these different departments collaborate to make products that effect the community and the clients that the company works for. The interesting thing about interning here at NV5 is that the project me and my mentors have settled upon involves me working on creating drafts of my product on designing software and Photoshop, which I will be working with my mentor who does the Landscape Architecture. The other potion of the project will require me to work with structural engineers on creating a bridge that can support a certain amount of weight and talking about the calculations I did to make it all work. This means that I am not going to be confined in working in one space and that I will be able to explore the building when creating my project. Overall I am extremely excited to get to work with my mentors and colleagues on creating my project for the next four weeks. Being able to meet new people within the work space and hopefully create a strong relationship between NV5 and High Tech High North County. But at the same time I am also afraid of setting up so many projects and not having enough time to complete them all. This is going to require me to do thorough planning and ask for help from my mentors and colleagues. Since I didn't quite have an internship yet for career day I decided to go to work with my father for the day to see how he handles an average day at work. I learned some important lessons while I was with him such as being late to work or a job site is unacceptable and will most likely result in you losing the job. If you are going to be missing a job day with reasonable cause you need to contact your boss or inform who you will be working with for the day why you will be gone in advance to make sure that there are no problems. Following those two tips will help you keep the job and acquire friendships with your peers. The next thing that I noticed was how everyone was dressed while on a job site. For the most part you wore the companies provided clothes and followed the dress code that they provide for the employees. Although I will not be working with my father for this 4 week period I can use the information gained and apply it to the internship that I get.
After working for one day and using everything I had seen and being ready to apply it to my 4 week internship, I feel more prepared for the professional world that lies ahead of me. I can use these skills and tips that my father has shown me to make my experience in the professional world more enjoyable. |
AuthorMy name is Trevor Prais and these blog pages are going to be used to document my experience´s at my 4-week internship at NV5 |