My favorite part of the job was the community and work culture fostered by the engineers I worked with. The engineers were always passionate about ensuring I understood not just my role in whatever project we were working on that day, but also the underlying logic and objective behind the entire project. I also enjoyed that I wasn't assigned to one project to work on all summer, and was instead expected to bounce around all the active projects the various engineers were working on at the time and help out as needed. This gave me lots of exposure and experience handling the various programs and systems the engineers used on a daily basis. Finally, I liked that I was given tasks that actually affected the project in noticeable ways and was entrusted to complete said tasks with minimal oversight from the full employees. This not only made me feel like I was more than just the dead weight intern that stays out of the way and looks important, but also let me apply everything the other engineers had taught me and use my own problem solving skills to produce real results with my work.
What I wish was different
My biggest complaint with the job is the importance of the security clearance. As government contractors, all TRC employees need a government security clearance to access the database where all the test data is stored. Unfortunately,, this downside is largely outside of TRC's control due to the government bureaucracy that controls the issuing of security clearances. This massively impacts your ability to interact and experience the analysis and compilation aspect of collecting testing data, and made some days feel like I had nothing to do since all the engineers were working on analysis that I was unable to easily access. I was able to interact with this data during my internship before being issued my security clearance, but relying on the other engineers to take time out of their day to copy files onto a external drive for me always felt bad.
Advice
My biggest piece of advice I can give is to not be afraid to ask the other employees about what they are working on and if you are able to help out in any way. when combined with the previously mentioned issues with security clearances, its easy to feel like you cant help out if no one is actively collecting data. this cant be further from the truth and all the engineers I worked with were always happy to try and find something I could do to help or point me in the direction of someone who might need my help. This skill in incredibly important to cultivate because there were days no one was testing either because of the weather or because the area was already claimed by other people. Unless you take the initiative to find work that needs done, its easy to end up sitting at your desk with nothing to do for 10 hours feeling like you haven't accomplished anything. Although there are occasional slow days, if you put the effort in you should be able to find something that can help you learn new things and expand your knowledge base every day.
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Facilities Intern
May - August 2018 • East Liberty, OH
What I liked
I like the independence of my work along with learning new things and meeting awesome people.
What I wish was different
I wish I had a some more assistance when it came to background knowledge both in history and technical vocabulary.
Advice
Take initiative, ask questions, and take all advice with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that, in general, advice comes from a certain perspective. You do you.
