Internships and apprenticeships are a time-honored rite of passage in many industries. We’ve asked some brilliant folks to share some of the most important lessons they learned during these early experiences in their career.

Fabiana Meléndez Ruiz

The most important lesson I learned while being an intern was the importance of “being a sponge.” There are a lot of lessons at work that you absorb through osmosis — not everything will be told to you explicitly, and it’s important to sharpen your powers of observation to really understand the way things work. I learned the most when I was observing the ways leaders around me reacted to crises or how they spoke at meetings. Read more>>

Chase Wilson

During the Summer in 2022, I had my first paid internship that I also got AXP credit hours for. (AXP hours are essential to gaining your architecture license.) It was an internship with a residential development firm in Nashville and I worked alongside 3 other students in my architecture program together to revise plans, connect subcontractors to projects, and develop neighborhood ideas/concepts. Read more>>

Ekta Yadav

I remember one year I was trying to finish / bachelors and a minor faster than anticipated in undergrad and so I took on over 22 credit hours per semester, plus working full time at P&G on their TAMPAX R&D team and it was just a crazy year. I feel like it was those moments in time where you got super human powers for a brief period. Read more>>