This is a guest blog from Beth Hahn, intern at Thomas P. Miller & Associates and student at IUPUI.
Throughout the course of my undergraduate and graduate career, I have been an intern in a variety of settings including, but not limited to: an elementary school, funding organization, local community center and a consulting firm.
As an intern, I have assisted organizations on a variety of tasks ranging from copying and filing documents to supporting organizations with their strategic planning process. These internship opportunities have been truly instrumental in my personal and professional development. More importantly, these internships have given me confidence on how I want to move forward in my own professional goals once I graduate from IUPUI’s School of Social Work in May.
I have been in my current internship at Thomas P. Miller, & Associates (TPMA) since December. I was a bit anxious about my new role because the world of consulting was brand new to me. There were numerous acronyms, best practices and protocols that seemed like a foreign language in the first few weeks of my internship. However, TPMA staff members assured me that a learning curve is part of the experience and they were available to answer any of my questions.
During the first week, I was provided a schedule of tasks and meetings to familiarize myself with the firm’s operations and staff members. TPMA has approximately 35 employees, and I had several meetings with only a few staff members to simply chat and get to know one another. With my minimal experience in consulting, this process provided me with an opportunity to get to know my colleagues and ask questions. The personalized onboarding process helped alleviate some anxiety I had going into the internship, but I definitely still had reservations on how I would perform in this new context.
I had the privilege of attending the annual IMPACT awards luncheon with other TPMA staff members in early February. The keynote speaker, Jennifer Fisher, provided a great speech on the premise that a person cannot win the lottery if he or she never buys a ticket. She urged employers and interns to simply “go for it.” She also discussed how failure is an inevitable part of life. A person should not put all of their energies into their failures, but into the act of learning from their mistakes.
This message was timely for me because I had recently entered into unfamiliar territory and feared failing. It also echoed a conversation I had in my first week at TPMA with the president of the firm. He attributed the company’s success to learning from past failures and moving forward with fresh knowledge and perspectives.
This new internship experience has been completely out of my comfort zone, but it has provided me with a new outlook to give myself more permission to ask questions, make mistakes, learn from them and continue to grow personally and professionally.
