One of the questions people asked the college interns during the midway presentations was how their education has helped with the work they are doing for Indium Corporation. JJ and I received that very question, and, to be honest, my education has been utilized very little during my time here. I knew very little about solder paste before starting my internship, and I knew less about the voiding problem. This isn’t a knock on my college education or my intelligence; schools just don’t teach that type of specific information. The biggest help to my position here has been the lab experience I gained from my schooling, and it has been extremely important.
I have a decent amount of lab experience from school and my short professional career. My bachelor’s degree was in general chemistry, so I spent a lot of hours in chemistry labs as well as in a research project I completed one summer. Post-graduation, I worked in an analytical chemistry lab for 2 years as an analyst - mainly running an instrument. Through these experiences, I have developed basic laboratory skills and etiquette, as well as some chemical intuition. For my internship, I spend most of my day in labs, running a number of different tests and experiments. Even with my experience, I have not run a single test or experiment at Indium Corporation that I have ever run before. However, I still have the ability to learn quickly, show good techniques, and produce good results based on my practice in other labs.
Every job you have will ask you to do different things. You might run different tests, you might work with different software, but the constant is that basic lab techniques and intuition are needed to succeed. This can only be learned from practice, and practice only comes from getting in the lab. Because of my education, I have that practice.
Thanks
Bryan