On a sunny Monday morning I parked my bike outside the doors of the OEDK for the thousandth time. I stepped through the doors like I had done so countless times as a student. However,  this was the first time I was an intern in the OEDK. It honestly didn’t feel very different. When I met all the other interns and faculty on the first day during the various icebreakers, I almost felt like I was back in ENGI120 as a freshman. During the afternoon of the first day, we were assigned our projects.

As Dr. Holmes revealed the names of the interns assigned to each project, I was quite nervous as I believed that the project I was assigned to would define my 7-weeks in the SEED Internship. When my name appeared under the River Sampling project I was relieved because this was one of the projects I was interested in working with. Amongst my name were the names of three other interns I had not met before. When we got together for the first time I learned that one of them, Brandon, was a fellow Rice student, while Motun and Dara were international students. I was excited to work with them on this project as part of team FlowMetrics. This was beginning to feel very similar to my first day in ENGI120 nearly two years.

As we went over the goals for this project and for the internship as a whole, I began to wonder, what do I want to achieve?

While the ultimate goal is to produce a design that meets the intended objects, I thought about my personal goals for this internship. Unlike in ENGI120, I was not working towards a grade. Unlike my involvement in my Rice Flight design club, I was not working towards a competition. Unlike in those endeavors, I was not bounded by a mark on a transcript or a number on a judge’s scorecards. I could make the most of this internship as an opportunity to work on technical and personal goals.

As I pondered my goals, I thought, “well obviously, I want to become a better engineer”. Then I began listing all the circuit-building, coding, and other technical skills I wanted to develop. However, I realized that being a good engineer was more than having technical expertise. In fact, if I was assigned to a different project I may not have had the chance to develop this specific subset of skills I was keen on.

I needed to find goals that would transcend this specific project. I decided that figuring out what made this internship opportunity unique. I looked around at my fellow interns. Around half of them were international students from various countries in Africa. Despite being in a brand new environment, all of them seemed very comfortable and were confidently talking with us Rice students. I would have definitely been more shy and nervous if I were in their shoes. I had my first goal; I scribbled down “Become more confident in meeting and learning from new people”. There was definitely a lot I could learn from the unique experiences of my fellow interns.

Then I remembered how relieved I was when I was assigned to the River Sampling project because its scope would allow me to develop the technical skills I was interested in. Would I have been as happy if I was assigned to a different project? I realized that, I would likely have been disappointed and disheartened with a project that was unrelated to electrical engineering and would have failed to make the most of the internship. My next goal was thus to become more open to different opportunities even if they are different from what I want or expect.

This seemed to be a good starting point. In our client interviews, team discussions, and research sessions that took place during the rest of the week, I found ways to actively work towards those goals. I hope that as we work on the brainstorming and prototyping phases over the coming weeks, I will be able to develop these goals further and improve my contribution to my team!