Jepson Internship 2021

Week 5 – Solving Problems/Improving Leadership

Emma Johnson July 11, 2021

This post actually comes at a good time for me, considering that I’ve been having some issues in this arena over the course of this week. The first month of my internship was pretty slow, and I was trying to be patient with that given my feeling that I didn’t really understand what it was my boss wanted me to do while I waited for work to pick up. However, now, the opposite is true – I know that I have a lot to do, but I’m not quite sure what my boss expects of me. My boss is managing a massive amount of work in a variety of different areas; it seriously astounds me she’s able to get done as much as she’s able to do within any given week. That being said, I have felt like it’s really difficult to understand what she expects of me on certain projects, even when I attempt to clarify. I think part of the issue is that there’s so much about this field that I don’t understand that it’s hard for me to really feel confident/ like I’m making progress, in addition to the fact that it seems as if my boss is not always able to effectively communicate what she expects from me. I know there are certainly things I can do on my end to improve the situation – namely, to take better notes, try to focus more effectively, and ask for clarification when necessary – but I also think that setting up a regular time to touch-base (more regular than once a month) would be helpful. I also think my boss would benefit from more clear communication on her end as well; addressing this in a professional manner is difficult coming from an intern to a boss, but I can foresee maybe trying to co-write goals at the end of my meetings with her so they’re in language we both understand.

As far as increasing collaboration and teamwork (and eliminating confusion), I do think it would be nice to have some sort of open-forum meeting with our team once every other week to talk about areas where we’re confused or stuck on different concepts we’ve come across, since the area we’re working in is so complex. Of course, I don’t want to burden anyone with extra work in a given week, but maybe just asking people to share one thing they learned in our “team” chat would be a helpful way to continue to spread knowledge of the field and help others understand difficult concepts. I do think our team would benefit by having more informal meetings with each other or at least having more informal conversations. Building relationships in a virtual environment is difficult, but I’ll hopefully be able to work more of a relaxed feel into the team through some meetups that I could host.