The first day of an internship is always filled with emotion – I am very excited, yet nervous. Excited because I was given this great opportunity to intern at Eastman Kodak Company – a global technology company focused on imaging, I love technology and photography, I believe it will be a great way to learn and to develop myself. Nervous because it is the first time I am working for this company, I do not know what kind of internship I will be experiencing, what type of people I will encounter, my mind full of question marks.
Settling in at Eastman Kodak
As time goes by, my first week turned out smooth. I was greeted by my manager on my first day and soon introduced to a couple of co-workers. They are all very nice people, very welcoming, and helped me settle down in my cubicle. I participated in an employee safety training and a summer intern orientation. I also completed my I-9 employment verification process with my manager. My first task is to set up my own working desktop and connect it to the Internet, which is a piece of cake for me. Since I will be working on a web programming project, I also requested a larger monitor and a better keyboard, which were both fulfilled the next day.
The first week as an intern
Later in my first week, I had a few meetings with my team lead and one another stakeholder to understand my internship project and their expectations. The project I will be doing is helping the company to transform a local computer-based internal database to a website-based user interface (UI) in order to increase accessibility and productivity. This may sound simple, but it is not an easy project. I expect to spend a lot of time to develop both front-end (Client-side) and back-end (Server-side) of the website. It is an exciting project as I will not only to apply the web and database knowledge I learned at the iSchool, but will also have the opportunity to learn some other technologies such as PHP and AJAX. I hope by end of this internship, I will be at least one more step closer to be a full-stack web developer.
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Early impressions
As I am interning at Eastman Kodak Company, I found some interesting things. Many of employees arrive very early to work, I heard some of my colleagues come in around 5 or 6 AM in the morning to start work and leave in the early afternoon. Another aspect that really surprised me is that Kodak people have a good sense of humor; my co-workers love to joke around and laugh. I feel they are really enjoying their work and are genuinely happy about their lives.
Outside of my internship, I am a lover of technology, arts, travel, and photography. I like to spend some of my spare time to learn technologies that I do not know yet. I also like to go explore the city and snap some shots where I think is beautiful or meaningful, sometimes, I post photos to my Instagram @imcc and other social media sites. I want to visit as many museums and art galleries as possible.
An internship is a way to discover your full potential. Being an intern is fun, challenging, and rewarding. You should stay curious, not be afraid to try new things and make mistakes – a lot of mistakes. You make mistakes, learn from them, move on and do it better.
That’s my first week of internship, I’d like to hear about yours and I am all ears for your feedback, feel free to leave a comment, please.
