Boston Take 2!
Neatly dressed, all documents in place, I reached the office, super excited to begin my first day at work and of course the free goodies. 😛 It was such a vibrant atmosphere. Day one was very interesting since I got to explore the MIT Media Labs as we were going to collaborate with them for a project. I felt lucky to be a part of such an amazing opportunity.
Since I was in the Philips Lighting Research North America, there were approximately 30 employees in that office along with around 12 interns. It wasn’t a very large group, and so we got to mingle with each other and learned quite a lot about each other’s work. I did not have much of a technical background in lighting but with such an amazing team I quickly learned a lot and now I see lighting in a totally different way, thus the title. I realized that lighting applications are very complicated and this overarching challenge requires a cross-functional approach.
My team and managers were extremely helpful and valued every opinion and idea of mine. Being around and working with experienced professionals, gave me a lot of confidence and taught me a lot about teamwork and leadership. I can say that I made a significant amount of contribution during my time at Philips and have taken a lot of values from there.
It was a very friendly and super fun environment to work in. We would have intern lunches organized by the company and sometimes the managers would take us out too. It was a good way to network and learn more about the different projects and opportunities. The interns were all working on various platforms and we would try to get to know each other’s work and expand our learning experiences.
Of course, there were times when we had a lot of work to complete because of deadlines and we would stay back in the office until 11 pm to complete it. We got to experience the struggles one could face while working too. We have all stayed up late to complete assignments at school, it felt the same at work too. Though it was fun in its own way. Sometimes a few other interns would just stay back and work on their project even though they didn’t have any deadlines so that they could just motivate the other intern to complete their work.
Hanging out with the interns after work hours was a lot of fun too. We all became very good friends and would constantly look for different things to do and new places to visit in and around Boston. After a tiring, though fruitful day at work we would just go bowling or try out a new restaurant or attend events and have fun.
Overall, I think I was able to balance my work and social life well.
Published on October 4th, 2017Last updated on October 29th, 2017