The first week of my internship was overwhelming, but amazing!

It was crazy starting my internship and moving to a new city all in one week. On the first day of the job, I went through an orientation where I learned all about the organization and how the different departments work together.

It was cool to understand all that goes on behind the scenes at the Federal Reserve. There are over 400 employees and 36 teams just in the Information Technology department! It was also awesome meeting the 20 interns in my department who are studying technology at schools around the country.

I spent most of my first week learning about what my department and team do. I’m working on the teams who manage network infrastructure and storage. I met with people of different roles to see what they do day to day and how I could help them as a summer intern.

Opportunities to Grow

I think that over the summer my technical skills will improve exponentially. I have already learned more about firewalls, networking, data storage, and infrastructure. Although I have learned about most of these topics in class at the School of Information Studies, it’s a different learning experience to see them in practice.

I hope to learn how to set up routers and servers on my own. In addition, I want to learn more about the Board’s version of the system development life cycle, which was taught in IST 352, Information Analysis of Organizational Systems.

My D.C. Bucket List

There is so much to do in Washington, D.C., but there are a few spots that I really want to visit. Here’s my list for the summer:

If anyone has fun D.C. suggestions, please let me know in the comments!

Lesson Learned

During the first week at my internship, I learned how important it is to make connections. Since I’m new to the area, I wanted to meet as many people as possible. It was really helpful to have an immediate network of people who were all in the same position. It’s awesome to have a group of people to ask questions to, get lunch, or explore the city over the weekend. It definitely makes moving to a new place less intimidating!

How my iSchool Knowledge Helped Me

Within the first day of working, I already saw how my iSchool education would help me during my internship. I’ve been using technical knowledge from almost all of my classes, in addition to management skills that can be applied in almost any situation. I also have a great introduction that has been perfected at many iSchool networking events, and on Spring Break in Silicon Valley.

Overall, I had a great start to my internship, and am looking forward to all I will learn and all the people I will meet throughout the summer. Thanks so much for reading!