This is an article I’m writing for my college-age self and anyone else who is uncertain if they are ready for an internship. Around my sophomore year, I was working at multiple odd jobs at the university, Mailroom, Kitchen, and Maintenance, when I started talking with my professor about finally getting an internship as our degree path required internship credits. At that time, I had only done some CS classes and our project classes. None of which I thought qualified me to work in the professional field as an Intern. However, I decided to just see what the interview process would be. I sent my resume to three different places, the college website, a local software house, and a travel insurance search engine company. Going through the interview process I felt super discouraged, I didn’t know a lot of what they were asking, but I did my best to show interest, and ask questions. A few weeks after all 3 interviews I had only heard back from the campus website position and they wanted to bring me on! I was super excited and was headed over to sign paperwork and set my schedule with them. Halfway through I got a phone call from the travel insurance search engine company and received an even better offer, which I accepted.
Once I was there I was forged in the fire under the CTO’s supervision. Making me commit code that I could see in production on day one, really helped boost my confidence that I could do this. Throughout the process, I realized that being an intern is not necessarily about the value that you bring immediately to the company. Instead, it’s a perfect opportunity for a company to take a blank slate that hasn’t learned any bad habits, train them in the best way they seem possible in the hopes of securing a well-trained developer post-graduation. They might pay you, but you will learn more in a good internship than you will in the generic CS classes at college, and they will pay you decently to do it!
In summary, be brave, get out there, and get an internship! You will gain so much real-world knowledge and be able to test out the type of industries that you might be interested in, it’s like dating for your future job. Due to my great internship, I fell in love with Ruby on Rails and have used that experience to progress successfully through my career. I will always be eternally grateful for the opportunity given to me as well as the great mentorship I received.
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