About Internships
Well, we all know about internships and how they are a period of preparation between the real stuff and just knowing the basics. We all have been there, but making such a decision of which internship you should take it oftentimes is difficult.
Why is taking an internship difficult?
Taking an internship may be difficult because is a decision that may define better your career path. We have to make a wise and meditated choice about which internship we should take and which now will help us in the future.
Small internships
Imagine you are with a tiny group of people, and you are taking a boat and you all want to go to the sea. Well if you imagine the boat very big, everyone has a part to do so it can sail to the ocean. No one has one task, they all share tasks and do various different tasks so the boat can sail.
Small internships often feel like that, you won't do just a couple of specific tasks. Often times a small internship really puts your knowledge and technical skill to challenge because you have to do a lot of different things. Things that will make the project sail into the ocean and hopefully be a success.
Confusion in small internships is the most common feeling of all. If you are not familiarized with how the company works, you will definitely feel overwhelmed. But what you learn is how to work with various things and take a lot of input and experience using a little bit of everything. You will use back-end, front-end, and a little bit of UX and UI. You will be responsible for many different parts of the project and feel that you have a huge responsibility on your shoulders.
Big internships
Well big internships, au contraire, they are like the Titanic. They have a huge staff and maybe they need a specific part of the Titanic to function. So your knowledge about the boat won't be everything that is happening on it, it will limit itself to the specific need of the moment.
The word to describe big internships is "specialization". You as an intern will study a really specific feature with a specific technology. You will learn a lot about the specific thing you are doing and will become specialized on that, but oftentimes you will miss the bigger picture.
Big companies often times have a better set internship project. Organization in your education is key for learning technology well, so if the big company has internship programs, that may be appealing to you as a possible intern.
What a friend told me
I myself struggle with the question of which one should I choose. There is no definite right or wrong answer but it really does come to what fits your personality and aim. I study software engineer at college and I still want to explore as much as I can, while I can. So I try to get lost in many matters of programming, architecture, design.
For me, the best choice is to take a small internship where they every week introduce me to a different project using another technology. Yes, I almost quit a few times because I felt overwhelmed and incapable of handling so much new stuff, but I have come to learn and understand so much about the possibilities in my career that it has been worth it.
A friend of mine has learned a lot about bigger companies using specific technologies. She prefers been guided in a specific program and using really advanced technologies so it can solve specific problems for the company. The benefits that she told me, was understanding the industry and how it worked in those specific cases and departments.
Take your time
When doing an internship either option will feel new and new oftentimes means not feeling qualify for the position. Take your time and ask questions and for feedback. Maybe the confusion is part of the process of learning.
Contact
If you liked this article and want to talk I have a Twitter account. The name is @alegarciy and I will gladly share further about my experiences as a student trying to get into the tech industry.