Internship; a new world opens up!
Reluctantly, I packed my bags on June 4th and took a flight out from Pune. Reaching here I was still stuck emotionally with my friends back in Pune, I really wanted to stay back and spend more time with them which I still regret I couldn’t. I had a sleepless night on 6th June, the one that you have when you are nervous and excited, like before getting your board exam results, I was due to start my internship the very next day. On 7th June, I entered the premises of an enormous SEZ with BIG dreams, hopes, aspirations and expectations. It was not just an internship for me. It was an amazing learning experience. I was mapped onto a real project and I started undergoing training the very next day. I got the opportunity to work in an organization and practice what I have learnt in books.
The first few weeks (1 week in case of mine), is always about reading documents on top of documents and it’s not like college where you are tested by an exam. It is the understanding that matters; it does not matter if you can display your understanding in a word or in a thousand words. There are no tests, no marks; your performance is the only test and your hike is your mark. I was placed as a Junior Functional (Business) Analyst; something that almost all MBA grads set out to become. I am fortunate that I got a peek into the kind of work at such an early stage. I was involved in everything related to the lifecycle of software product development, from an incubate stage to a grown-up stage. As an intern, it is the experience that matters, I got the much more than I bargained for. An experience that surpassed every lesson that I have gained from textbooks!
I wrote documents that ran for pages. What did I understand from that? Writing (typing) is not the hardest part, it’s not the thought process that goes into the pages of documents, it is making the documents understood to another person (in this case, a person who writes lines of codes). “Knowledge Transfer” is the fancy corporate term coined for this process. As the name suggests, it is transferring knowledge to another. I had to show the sample of a small screen which forms a part of a huge ocean called an application and explain it to the technical guy who would be responsible for writing those lines of codes which would make my screen up and running. And his understanding has to be clear, crystal clear, for anything that is wrongly developed; my name goes down the drain. I was absolutely thrilled when I learnt that I would be doing everything that a Business Analyst does. It was a challenge being a fresher. The fact that my work was taken into importance more importantly formed a part of that application, motivated me to get to office and work harder than ever.
Sometimes, it’s not the work; it’s the people at work who make work enjoyable. Here, it was my bosses and my senior at work who made my work enjoyable and who exposed me to everything related to software development. I spent time bonding with members from other teams. Fresh out of college, I ended up calling everyone “Sir/Mam”; it is corporate culture to call everyone using names. I could not convince myself to call people who were years older than me using their name. It felt wrong. Right from childhood, you have been asked to give respect and suddenly walking into a new place you find people of all ages addressing each other with names. This is something I got used to only towards the end of my project.
Life in the corporate world is very different. Your day could start as early as 5.30am and it would go on overnight. This is life! Office becomes your second home. The initial years of joining an organization, I know what I must look forward to; I would have a lot to do and lot to learn before going up the ladder. I could be placed in one team and then shifted to a whole new different team when the project gets competed, which means I must be able to adapt easily and move around well with people. Time! Something which we can never have enough of drastically seems to fly when you start working. Initially, you wouldn't find time to do anything extra during weekdays as work drains you out and at the end of a very long day all you want to do is have dinner, hit the bed, stretch and sleep. This cannot go on for long though, for fitness freaks like me, will find time to either take long walks or hit the gym sometime before and after work. Saying “I don’t know, please teach me” is not accepted. If you don’t know something, it is your responsibility to find out about it. Your senior is a mentor, a map when you get lost, a light that guides you and not someone who teaches you the ABCD of your work. You have to work your way through. It is just like when you learn to walk or your dad letting go of holding your cycle when you learn how to ride, you are on your own, you fall and you learn. I now understand that the size and name of the organization doesn’t matter. Getting placed with “big” brands is not the achievement/end; it’s the learning that follows no matter where you are placed, and I am happy to say that I got the learning that added sense to my PG course, for there can be no end to learning.
I have a long way to go and lots to do. “I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.”
