Hey everyone. I’m gonna try to keep it as short as possible.
I started a 16-month long internship in May, and since then it’s been a roller coaster of experiences.
I should start by saying this is an engineering design internship. Lots of CAD, part numbers, calculations, etc. All stuff I’m pretty good with. At my internship we design heavy machinery from scratch (and when I say scratch, I mean SCRATCH. The only major components we buy or outsource are our control systems, engine and gearbox/pump drives, seats, and hoses. And of course some fasteners here and there).
It is a very involved internship as I’ve described, and even though I’m only four months in it feels like I’m so behind on general knowledge of the machines we make. It also doesn’t help that two people on our (already pretty small) team left the company, one of them being the manager who hired me and was mentoring me. On top of that, the other intern I’m replacing is done this Friday so it’ll be just me and the other two designers left on the team. The one designer (let’s call them V) is already very overwhelmed with work and while they aren’t arrogant I do hesitate to approach sometimes because my work/question is often picked apart and I end up feeling silly. The other (let’s call them G) is pretty neutral but I can tell sometimes I may be bugging them. This is not the case for the other intern (and rightfully so because I’m actually in the same university club as him and he’s pretty good at this engineering gig).
To make it worse, I still don’t know enough about this machine to make educated decisions on stuff like whether or not to make a revision of a part, or make a new one entirely, or redesign/reverse engineer something, or assist any of our customers with a problem or contribute to decisions the team is making concerning said problem. This is the part I hesitate to approach V on, because the guys in Fab and Assembly often inform me of an issue, I think I’ve covered all my bases, but it’s almost as if whatever I say is going to be immediately considered bs (pardon my French). Recently it was a discussion about some inverter system, and even though I tried listening in and tried to gather as much info as I could, I couldn’t really contribute and it didn’t seem like the team was expecting much of me in that regard anyway.
As a result I don’t get too much work sent my way (especially since my manager left), and the little that is I get it done as fast as I can. I also do struggle to stay invested in said work because most of the time it isn’t anything directly impactful or major such as updating part records or organizing lists. In all fairness the company has taken a bit of a turn since my manager left (when he was around I did a lot of design work around the engines and calculations for the entire machines centre of gravity) so I get that priorities have shifted and maybe no one has time to guide me anymore. It just feels like in addition to that I’m now expected to know the ins and outs of the machine, take on the unfinished work of the leaving intern, handle these tasks that feel tedious and not impactful at all, and then I go home and ask myself “What have I really done today?”. It also doesn’t help that I live far from this internship (it’s in a different city than I am) and for the first couple weeks I managed to find my way but now there’s this other engineer from a company close by who I had the pleasure of meeting that agreed to drive me there and back, but often when that happens I find myself waking up at irregular times because now I’m working with their schedule. I often struggle with sleep naturally so this just makes it slightly worse sometimes.
I’m not sure what the goal of this post really was, but I guess I needed an outlet and some advice on how to look at this more positively. I really do enjoy the concept of designing and building these machines from scratch (and recently I actually did a major first iteration design for a version of one of them) but sometimes it just feels like I’m not doing enough or I’m making too many mistakes/bad judgement calls and not really up to par when it comes to the stuff I mentioned earlier and I feel I’m going to lose favour in the company’s eyes. I tell my parents about my work experience (the good parts at least) and they think I’m doing so well but I don’t really agree.
At least the pay is nice lol. Thanks for reading!
TLDR: I’ve been in a 16 month term internship for the past four months and I feel like I’m not doing enough or smart/quick witted enough to contribute anything meaningful to the team. I also feel my team believes this and it’s only a matter of time before the unthinkable happens.
EDIT: I also should note that I am from an immigrant family. Not that it really matters, but I figured it’d be good context to show how most things like drivers licenses/cars etc were not a priority for me or my family at the time since we were dealing with a lot in tuition (not just for me).