All dressed up in formals, with excitement and fear tussling with each other to make their presence known, I tried to opened the main door of NYSERDA.

Beep.

Tried again …

Beep.

I stood there, staring at the door that didn’t want me to get to work. Finally the receptionist helped me and opened the door to let me in. When I saw the other 39 interns who would be working alongside me this summer, I finally felt at home.

First Week Training

My first week predominantly consisted of on-boarding and orientation procedures. All of the interns were briefed by the HR for the entire first half of the first day. Interns from the NYC office joined us through web-conference.

All the interns had lunch outside with the teams they would be working on this summer. Slowly my inhibitions shed, for my colleagues were so friendly. I was relieved, and I knew that the next three months would be awesome.

Getting First Assignments

I was given few reading materials to study and get accustomed with my projects. NYSERDA uses Tableau and SAS, so I took that as a cue to study up on SAS and add a new skill to my arsenal. I try to make good out of any situation.

For the summer I’ll be working on the Air Source Heat Pump Program project. This project will take a phased approach to encourage homeowners across New York State to change to more efficient heating and cooling equipment,

As a data analyst summer intern, my first task was to analyze a survey results. The survey was taken across the state to answer a few questions, such as: how interested the people are in moving towards clean energy, what is the ideal incentive that they are expecting from NYSERDA, etc.

With much excitement, I started … only to realize it wasn’t that simple as I thought. To all the data analysts out there: working with real data is totally different. With the help of my mentor, I was eventually able to analyze it with a combination of Excel and Tableau. I also presented it to my team. Yes, it was my first success.

Apart my internship, I plan to learn to cook. In this era of fast food, I made myself a point that I will cook my own healthy meals.

Thank you everyone for spending your time to read this post. Have a wonderful summer.

by Palaniappan Muthukkaruppan