the LGO journey

Wrapping up the internship

I’m winding down my internship at Raytheon and thought I would share a few thoughts.

First, I think people in the program get a lot of anxiety around the whole internship process.  People worry where they are going to be located, what project or focus they will work on and who they will be working for.  I understand its a great way to get easy access to a company or location, but people probably stress a little much over the whole process.  No matter where you end up, its what you signed up to do and its going to be an incredible learning experience.

Even if we hate the internship, hate the location, the project fails or your boss hates you (I’ll be honest, these things happen) everyone gets to come back to school.  Back to a program that they love. 

Back in school, you can hit the reset button and step back to focus on what you really want to do.  Thats where I am now.  I’m reflecting on my experience, understanding what went well, what went poorly and how I would change it the next chance I get.  In addition, I tried to analyze what was important to me.  I pretty much knew coming in what I was looking for in a job (working with great people on challenging projects), but the experience at Raytheon helped to reinforce that for me.

Thesis wise, I did get a jump start on structuring the document in the final weeks of my internship.  I have a good idea of what I am going to write about (with help from my advisors) and how I am going to accomplish it.  I’m aiming for completion sometime around the fall.  My classmates are probably not going to be very happy if I am one of the first ones to hand it in :-)

That’s it for now.  Submit some questions here about the internship/thesis/off-cycle anything… and I’d be happy to answer them!

4 August 2011 · Comments