My Work as an Intern

How did you measure the success of the work you did while you were an intern? What did you learn from this?
School makes the process of validating work very simple and straight forward. Throughout my life I have received letter grades denoting the quality of the work that I have produced. This internship has taught me to be independent of outside validation. The work that I have produced during my internship was ultimately for the organization but it was for me as well. I was given guidelines but it was up to me to decide the caliber of work that I wanted to turn in to my mentor. I measured the success of my work by how hard I worked to produce it. In my first couple of days here, I created a flyer. I had four separate drafts, with notes on each because that was the standard I held myself up to. Because I felt that I worked hard I knew that this flyer was a success. I quickly learned that I should be proud in the work that I produce and I should hold myself up to very high standards.

How did you make a meaningful contribution to your workplace?
I felt like that work that I am doing has actual meaning because there is purpose behind it, no matter how menial the task. I was asked to cross reference a document with programs and find the ones that weren't already in a specific excel spreadsheet. It wasn't the most exciting task in the world but it had purpose because the organization needs to have a running list of programs, so someone had to do it. I was happy to be "someone" because I knew how important this task actually is. I have also brainstormed a list of things for the Iraqi Youth Delegation to do in San Diego. This was meaningful because I brought a perspective that was different to some of the programmers as I am the age of the delegates.