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My First Internship Experience

After a lot of soul searching, shadow working and self renewal, I decided it was high time I headed back to the material world and renew my resume, which was sitting in the dark recesses of my laptop. 

This will never not be my all-time favourite gif. - GIF on Imgur
Me coming out of my cave
and exploring my surroundings

Finding online webinars and workshops to be too monotonous and one sided, I decided to try my hands at an online internship. After consulting my trusted friends, family and college officials, I applied for a summer internship provided at the IIChE website (Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers), for which I got selected.

The orientation session was a breeze and I had no idea of what was coming up in the first day of the internship, which happened to be the day after the orientation. Gathering some basic info about the software I would be learning, I got ready for the first day (or so I thought).

The first day of the internship started and to say that I was left with gaping wide open eyes and mouth is an understatement; I was completely unprepared for the real deal and I felt terrified. 

yourreactiongifs terrified gif | WiffleGif
what have I got myself into...?

Within minutes, our respected and knowledgeable mentor had breezed through the basics of Auto CAD and had given us 2 in-class assignments to be submitted in a matter of minutes, over our 2 hour session.

Never in my life had I ever taken such active notes as I had done during those 2 hours. Never had I ever been so attentive (the fact that my mentor sometimes spoke in a language I could barely understand added to my curiosity of trying to extract the 'gyaan' he was expounding about Auto CAD, from the words he spoke). Never had I ever been in such a competitive batch where my fellow brains were working at supersonic speeds, while I was struggling to keep up.

Catch Up GIF - CatchUp - Discover & Share GIFs
I was probably the rock in a batch of sonics🤣

After our mentor was done reviewing our work (and repeatedly telling me that mine was incomplete), he wished us good bye and I heaved a sigh of relief as I logged off from my system. 

The fact that I had not quit or logged off in the middle of the session, though I very much wanted to, and had persevered in class with whatever I had understood, was a huge achievement for me.  

As I reflected on this unique experience, I started thinking....if this is how jobs would be from now on, as we venture slowly, safely and surely into a Corona-free world. 

No more take it easy desk jobs or relying on your dormant academic knowledge to get you placed in any enterprise. 

No more influences other than your speed, skill and expertise in your domain would land you a job, because our economies would require efficiency and hence would heavily prefer excellent quality of employees over influential recommendations.

No more workaholic culture, since physical, mental and emotional health would be factors to be taken into consideration, if you wanted happy, productive but limited number of employees.

Whether or not this would be the case scenario in the future, I had no clue. But I had enough clarity to know deeply that its definitely not a cakewalk out there. 

Continuously updating your knowledge in your fields of choice, practicing the necessary management and critical skills to implement a project that lands in your worthy hands and going after personal development and evolution, is what I think to be the way forward.

I am so grateful for my first day first hand experience that taught me so many lessons and I am excited to see what more I get to learn.

Cheers :)

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