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US College: Meet some of our interns! (Part 2)

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Last week we introduced you to Steve, now it’s time for us to introduce you to another Intel Intern! Here’s Erin, an Undergraduate Technical Intern with Intel Customer Support.

“How do you write about the topography of the forest when you are positioned on the floor underneath an encompassing canopy of trees? From this vantage point how do you explain your position relative to other landmarks of the area? In some ways it seems like that is exactly what I am trying to do here in this blog. Yes, I am in the middle of a fast-paced, dynamic and challenging internship that forces me use almost every skill I've managed to remember from school and previous work experiences. Yes, I am part of a global team with a set of ambitious goals and initiatives. Yes, this team expects me to contribute to these strategies. Yes, I am a current Intel Intern, but it can seem like I am standing underneath the canopy trees unable to describe the scenery around me.

How do you begin blogging about an experience you can barely wrap your mind around? How do you briefly explain about all of the exciting, confusing, challenging, mundane and terrifying moments that together make a beautiful patchwork quilt-like experience? I suppose an internship is best explained the same way we explain our lives- one story at a time.

Now, halfway through my Intel Internship I can begin to look at how far I’ve come already and frankly it’s hard to believe what I’ve accomplished and even harder to take stock of how much I’ve learned. In some ways, this position is just what I expected. I love my job because it is dynamic and challenging. I get to use my skills and am part of a terrific global team. You see, when I was applying for internships across the country, this criteria list was my guideline. I wanted an experience that would help put my education into perspective, help me gauge my interests and help me understand where I might like to dedicate life (or at a minimum 40 hrs a week) to. The Intel internship programknocked every requirement I had right out of park.

Though the internship fulfilled the criteria I had set out with, there are a lot of things that have happened during my internship so far that I didn’t expect or didn’t know:

- I didn’t expect to be pushed this hard (this is a good thing :-))

- I didn’t expect to present problem statements, communicate impacts and propose a course of action to a global team….within two weeks of starting.

- I didn’t know that the words “challenging” and “dynamic” have cousins named “terrifying” and “confusing”.

- I didn’t realize that mundane tasks can be good. They are comforting as they remind you that not only do you know how to do something, but you know how to do it well and efficiently.

- I didn’t expect that some of my strengths still need refining. Nor did I expect to discover new strengths.

- I didn’t expect to learn that learning how to ask the right questions is more important that knowing all the answers.

- I didn’t expect the thrill from making sense of chaos, even if it was just a little sense.

- I didn’t expect to learn how rewarding working in a team actually is.

- I didn’t expect to love certain aspects of business—areas that I actually had little interest for in school.

When I first signed on with Intel, I thought I had a decent idea of what I was getting into: the fantastic internship I was looking forward to is, in reality, fantastic. What I didn’t realize is that I would discover more than I ever bargained for.”

Wow, sounds like Erin’s really enjoying herself thus far! Can’t wait to hear more from her in the near future! We’ll also be introducing you to two more interns soon so stay tuned!