What I liked
After a virtual spring quarter, a cancelled internship and the fear of the unknown future, I
managed to keep myself productive in the comfort of my own home; Opal played a huge part of
my summer that has helped me gain several technical and soft skills. I enjoyed the hands-on experience I gained from doing market research through using various databases as a PMM intern to working on journal entries on Quickbooks with the Business team. Over the past few months I've gotten the chance to learn more about self which has been a great journey. Joining Opal was also an opportunity in which I got a chance to learn more about myself, my work ethic and my leadership style in a group environment. Although I’ve gotten a chance to work in various groups during school projects and assignments, leading a group of five students for four months, was completely different. For someone being born and raised in the Silicon Valley, I was always taught the importance of hard work, I always saw my parents work hard in their career and I was able to reflect hard work through my terrific work ethic this summer. I work long hours on my research and try to perfect every task that was given at hand. Despite this internship being unpaid, there was still an incentive for me to be diligent with my work because I was able to be a part of an organization that is working towards something that will serve great purpose to several students, including me and my fellow classmates. On the other hand, I also explored more of the leadership style that I’ve only read about in my management class at
school. I would say I play a supporting leadership role at Opal. Collaboration and communication are crucial to be a successful leader, and I’ve been able to learn the importance of this. Being able to communicate and support my team through the tasks and research conducted, we are able to be productive, competent with our work and see fast results. As a leader, I am also very empathetic, this characteristic in the past prevented me from giving constructive criticism to my team-mates. However, during my time at Opal I was able to
approach my teammates because I realized that my empathy can be used to my advantage to provide thoughtful, productive feedback.
