There are a plethora of things that I couldn’t imagine or predict before. For example, I wasn't very interested in public policy or careers related to education, much less how they were related. Yet, this internship offered me a great chance to get to familiar with the field and gave me a better understanding of how public policy is related to education and how it works. I was able to learn that making policy or obtaining funding for student grants is a whole process. The education department has to make a proposal, submit it to the governors and wait for their approval. It’s not an easy thing they could accomplish by themselves and apply it to the public immediately but a long going process of discussion, approvals, and application. I might not know the exact process for each public policymaking but I tried to learn as much as I could that is related to education in my internship.
In the internship, I’m really grateful that I had taken the Quantitative Skills of Economics class this spring, which allowed me to develop Excel skills that could be applied in the Adult Learner Project. For example, some of the skills that I learned are data cleaning, organizing and making an effective chart with all labels, notes and data resources. These are all essential skills I have applied in the project and it refreshed my knowledge from the class. I believe that the prerequisites of this program are valuable for making admission decisions because those prerequisites classes helped me set up a good foundation for this internship.
What I wish was different
Summertime is always short and there were a lot of things I had planned that were not accomplished as I expected. If I could have managed the time well, I would have tried to finish all the parts of my projects before I left and checked in with my supervisor. I wish that I could have had time to publish the charts on the OHE website by myself instead of leaving these to my teammates. I wish I could be more efficient to finish everything I wanted. In addition, some of the weaknesses uncovered in the internship include communicating, teamworking, and writing skills. I didn’t get enough chances to communicate with different co-workers to get to know their job because I was too focused on my projects and everyone was busy with their tasks. Writing is one of the hardest things for me to improve because of language barriers. Though I finished my first final report draft, I didn’t get enough time to communicate with my supervisor and make advancement. I wish that I could be more actively communicate with my co-workers and supervisor to get a deeper understanding of their job too.
Advice
The internship was a great opportunity for me to learn new skills outside of class and to figure out whether I want to go for this specific career in the future. I used to think that I would want to do a business analyst job after I graduate because I know that there are more companies demanding a business analyst in the developing economics market. However, this should not be the reason for me to do that. I learned some business intelligence software through this summer internship. It is a strong skill for me to do a related job but I might want to try something else. It’s always good to learn something new from the fields that one is not familiar with beforehand because it will give one more option and a broader view of their future career. No matter what decisions I will make in the future, the internship experience was meaningful to me and I believe that it matters to my future career as well.
