Week 6- Personal Contributions

This past week I thought that I would reflect on some of my personal contributions during my internship. The way I approached this internship was through the goal to learn as much as I can about the firm and its industry, as well as meet and connect with as many people as I can throughout the internship. When I think about my contributions, I look at them in two specific ways. The first type of contribution is more concrete and tangible, as it has to do with working on projects and relates to my efforts that I have put into these projects. The second type of contribution is my contributions to my relationships and my interactions with others as well as developing different and new relationships with other interns, managers, and colleagues. Meeting people and developing my network is a huge component of this internship so the contributions made to further my network are critical.

When looking at the projects that I have contributed to as well as the efforts that I have carried out, I have definitely learned more about the ways in which I can be a positive contributor on a team. In my internship program project, I work on a team with several other interns from different lines of business at Wells Fargo. For this project, I have added notes to our team document with ideas relating to our project as well as help create the outline for our slide presentation that is to be presented. I think in a lot of instances, managers and program leaders want to show us how to be positive and effective contributors when working with teams, which is why they gave us a lot of freedom with our teams, so that everyone has the opportunity to contribute. 

As I reflect on what type of contributions I have made with other people, I have met so many employees at Wells Fargo and they have given me a lot of extremely helpful advice for careers and best practices to be successful. Usually after a meeting with someone, I thank them with an email follow-up and then connect with them on Linked In. In doing this, after meeting them, I can stay in touch in the future should I pursue my career at Wells Fargo after my internship this summer. I will hopefully be able to leverage those connections that I continued in the future. I think that who a person knows is just as important as what a person knows, which is why my contributions and what I have gained throughout this internship are contained in the two areas of concrete contributions and my growing relationships.