Title: Overcoming Fears and Building Skills: My Internship Journey
The last few weeks of this internship course was quite challenging but also rewarding in the end. I along with my team conquered all the fear and difficulties that came along the way, from drafting the report to confidently presenting it to the entire class. The experience taught me the value of teamwork, perseverance, and stepping out of my comfort zone.
Over the past few weeks, my team and I dedicated most of our time to writing the final report and creating the slides for our class presentation. For our team, the biggest challenge was to find a common time to meet and work together as a group. Despite our busy schedules and other commitments, I am glad that we were able to coordinate and make it work for everyone. Another challenge we faced was figuring out how to begin the report, though we got some idea by looking at the example report. As we progressed, we decided to divide the tasks among ourselves, so that each member could focus on specific sections. Despite working on separate tasks, we continued to collaborate closely, offering help and feedback to one another whenever needed. In the end, we successfully completed our rough draft and prepared our slides for the dry-run presentation.
As the day of our presentation came close, we all got nervous and excited at the same time. For me personally, as a non-native English speaker with an introverted personality, public speaking has always been a personal challenge, and I admit I felt very anxious. However, I was determined to step out of my comfort zone and face my fear to get better at it.
Finally, the day came and we all settled down in the classroom. After the first team finished presenting, I got even more nervous as I felt my heart racing. And, a few moments later, there I was standing with my team, and getting ready to deliver our presentation. Despite a few minor mistakes, we managed to deliver a pretty good presentation. Afterward, we received constructive feedback from Mr. Baaki, Mr. Tomchick, Prof. Duvall, and other attendees, which we carefully noted to improve our final report and presentation. Receiving constructive feedback from them actually helped us to identify areas for improvement. Now, our next goal is to address these areas and improve our final report and presentation.
In conclusion, this experience helped me to strengthen my confidence and enhanced my ability to work effectively in a team. Additionally, I do want to mention that Dr. Baki sessions played a key role in making this experience even better. Overall, this experience taught me the value of empathy, positive mindset, mutual support, and perseverance.