Few Areas for Improvement

I have not noticed very few areas for improvement in the office of the secretary. I believe that this is because I am working remotely and am not able to fully observe the work environment. When I work I am engaging with my fellow intern as well as our intern coordinator and occasionally have introductory meetings with other staff members. This has not allowed me to fully observe the workplace environment and draw concussions for areas of improvement.

When reflecting on my intern experience there are a few areas for improvement. At the start of my internship, I was assigned to work with the Office of Higher Education to assist on a project. This project lasted six weeks and kept me very busy. However, over time it became tedious and it was clear I was not learning much. It was not until week four that my direct supervisor decided that once a week I would take time off of this project to assist with other projects within the office. This was a nice change of pace and allowed me to observe how the office works with minor issues. This was an area for improvement that was fixed while I was working. This decision was a nice change of pace and allowed me to learn more about the office by assisting on different projects.

This week I finished this tedious project and have been working on small projects here and there. I understand that it is difficult to manage remote interns. However, one issue I see is not that there may not be enough smaller projects for us to work on. From my understanding, the projects are geared towards long term collaborative work, which we are unable to join because we only have two weeks left. Overall this has not been an issue throughout the internship. However, one way in which they could improve this is to introduce the interns to projects throughout the internship and allow us to work on multiple at a time. This would have allowed me to gain more insight into the office and the work they do. 

The teamwork and collaboration amongst the different offices are very productive. I have found that most teams know each other and work together in a professional manner. I believe the decision to allow interns to work on different projects on Wednesdays stemmed from a collaborative decision from a few departments with whom we have worked. This was a positive improvement and benefited my internship experience.