It seems crazy to me that I am already writing my second blog. It feels like I just finished the first one, but I guess that is a testament to how quickly the summer has flown by. As I reflect on my time here at Indium Corporation, I realize that, despite how quickly it has gone, I have learned far more than I ever expected. There is so much that I could write about, from the people I have met, the skills I have cultivated, to the projects that I have worked on. However, one lesson stands out to me above all the rest: not everything can be learned from a textbook. My experience in the corporate world has reinforced my belief in the idea that the classroom is not the only place to learn. Some of life’s most valuable lessons are learned outside the academic setting. Do not get me wrong, I still think that school plays a very important role in a person’s development, but there’s also more than one way to learn. In fact, I would argue that the only way to gain a complete understanding of something is to have both book knowledge and real-world experience.
Before I began my internship in June, I assumed that success in the workforce would be mainly based on the concepts and skills that I had been learning in college, with part of my success coming from gaining experience. However, now I realize that it is quite the opposite. Technical skills are necessary to get you in the door, but to truly thrive requires professionalism, communication, adaptability, and curiosity, all skills that are sharpened through experience.
Throughout my life, most of my experience comes from an academic setting. In this environment, problems have clear directions that are pretty straightforward. You are given an assignment with instructions for what you must complete and when it must be done. I am very process-oriented, meaning that if someone lays out instructions for what I need to do, I will get it done. I like having steps to work through to ultimately achieve the end result. When there is a process in place, it is easy to tell when you have completed everything and ensure that you do not miss or leave out any parts of the problem. This task driven mindset has always helped me to do pretty well in school, because that is the way the academic world is structured.
However, coming to the corporate world was definitely a change of pace. Being very execution-driven undoubtedly has its benefits in the workforce too, but there is still a transition that has to be made. I look at it like going from sports practice to the game. Practice is a controlled environment, where the coach teaches players and creates situations that try to replicate a real game so that the players will be ready to play when the time comes. However, no practice can perfectly simulate a real game to prepare the players, as the game is unpredictable. It truly tests a player’s skill and ability. Without practice, you will be unprepared for the game, just like what all-time great quarterback Peyton Manning once said, “Practice is where you prepare to perform.” The classroom is just like practice; the professor controls the work that you do and has you learn concepts that will hopefully be used later in the workplace. It builds the foundation, but the workplace is where those lessons are applied to real problems that do not always have a clear answer.
I have quickly learned here at Indium Corporation that many of the objectives that we have are open-ended. As I have seen with a lot of my own work, I will be given a goal that we are looking to accomplish, and I must figure out the best way to achieve that result. In college, professors typically already know the answers, but are trying to teach you the process of finding those answers on your own. Together at work, people are often trying to discover answers as they go. That’s not to say that there are not people to help you with your assignments at work, especially at Indium Corporation.
During my internship, whenever I need help with a project, whether it be a simple fix or a complicated solution, people are always willing to take time out of their own workday to help me out. This is one of the clearest examples of The Indium Way that can be seen every day. For those that do not know about The Indium Way, it is a group of three core pillars that most closely resemble Indium Corporation’s culture. Those three elements are respect, appreciation, and achievement, which are all clearly demonstrated when helping someone else.
Another difference between school and the workplace that is noticeable is the goal of your work. In academics, whether that be high school or college, the goal of all of your work is ultimately to achieve a certain grade. People have different standards for what grade they want to achieve, but in the end, all of the work they do is for a grade. In this way, schoolwork is very individual; your work only affects you in most cases. The workforce is just the opposite: as all the work that is done helps drive decisions, and those decisions affect real people.
This is especially true for me in my internship, as the main project given to me for the summer was to build an expense dashboard that could be used by others within the company to help track their performance. This ties back to the idea of my first blog that everything within a business is connected. One completed task provides information or a way for someone else to complete their work and this chain continues throughout the company. Understanding the “why” of your work makes you more motivated to complete it. When the reason for doing work is a grade, it can be hard to stay enthused to do it. Here at Indium Corporation, however, motivation is easy to find, because materials science truly does change the world.
Perhaps one of the biggest differences between the classroom and the corporate world is that technical knowledge is just the beginning of professional growth. Throughout my internship, I have learned the importance of effective communication and asking good questions, while also understanding how to adapt to new challenges and work with feedback. These skills are hard to develop through academic coursework because they require real interactions, real responsibility, and real consequences.
When you hand in a project, you get a grade and some feedback on what you did wrong. But in most cases, once the assignment has been graded, you just move on to the next one without actually implementing those recommendations. While building my dashboard, I quickly learned that the first model could not be the final solution. As I shared my work with others, their different perspectives often revealed improvements that I would have never thought of on my own. Learning to accept and implement that feedback has been just one of the many lessons that I have gleaned from this internship.
As I wrap up the remaining weeks of my internship, I will be sad to see it end, as it has been such a great learning experience. I have met so many great people that are awesome at what they do. It has truly been a pleasure to be able to work with and learn from these people every day. Being able to work on my own project that is actually impactful to the company has also been a rewarding journey. I know there is always more for me to learn, but this internship has truly helped to prepare me for the corporate world. Wherever my career ends up taking me, I can move forward with confidence because not only have I had substantial practice in the classroom, but I have also gained some real game experience. The lessons that I have learned this summer will stick with me long after this internship ends.
