In general my past internship was my first main experience working in a professional engineering setting home in the US, as the previous summer I had interned at a company in India, and the summer before that I had interned at a family technical business where the setting was not as strictly professional, and my team was less engineering oriented and more software services oriented. In interning at Caterpillar, I learned how to better operate within a project goal system and make progress overtime while balancing multiple projects.
I generally worked on building a personal brand of being a hard working and competent engineer, and the feedback I received indicated as such, with my mentor even remarking that he would have had more intensive work ready if he had expected me to complete the work assigned to me as quickly as I did. This aligns with my self perception of being diligent and hard working, although I would like to procrastinate less. Overall, my feedback was positive throughout the internship, and I received a return offer, albeit I did not accept due to seeking new opportunities and different work environments to learn from.
Generally the most important “way of being” I would like to practice to achieve the personal brand I envision for myself would be to waste less time. Overall, I can waste fairly significant amounts of time throughout the days, and while I make up for it with hard work and lost sleep, I would like to be diligent so as to not resort to such methods quite as often.
Hoeft T&M Class 24: China Immersion 