Busy Summer Intern

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Compared to meeting preparation, writing the rough report required more specific knowledge in engineering. Though I learned some basics in my undergraduate studies, I had to actively learn in order to catch up with latest information. It was not difficult to conclude what experts all agreed on, but it’s was challenging to understand what they did not agree. Basically, what I was busy doing those days was making appointments with different experts, listening to his or her opinions and carefully choosing the opinion that sounded most reasonable.

Though running into some problems in the process, I was quite happy to see that the deliverables were very successful. My rough draft not only got my supervisor’s full approval but also was regarded as very useful for the construction company. One more deliverable that made me very excited was that several experts became good friends of mine and we are still in contact with each other after the project.

Personal Assessment

Though there were some ups and downs, in general, this internship was very successful. The manager, and even the senior manager, spoke highly of me and appreciated my consistent efforts devoted to CIECC. Moreover, I developed great friendship with several peers there and kept in touch after the internship. Beyond those, I think I found my real interest during the internship, which gave me a clear idea on what I would like to do after graduation.

In China, especially in state-owned companies like CIECC, employers or supervisors are usually unwilling to give formal or written feedback about an employee’s performance because of political reasons. Rather, they prefer to do it in an informal or oral way. I remembered when there were only two days before my final day of internship; the manager called me to his office and sincerely said: we are very short of staffs in recent years especially this year, your coming greatly helped us in dealing with the business with clients, let alone your client is very picky based on previous records. If you are willing to join us after your graduation, please contact me and I’d be very honored to have you as our employee. And if you know someone who is as excellent as you and is willing to join CIECC, please let him/her talk to me. From my point of view, getting approval from peers may not be a true reflection of my work, but getting approval from my boss definitely count. Especially he gave me the job offer immediately after the internship. I see that as an indication of great performance of my internship.

I believe it is my personality to develop friendship not only with those people who share the same interests as I do but also with people around as far as I could reach. Therefore, during the internship, I also developed very good friendship with the peers, especially those who shared the same office with me. In the world of cooperating, everybody knows the importance to work together in a group and make better achievements in a team. However, in my opinion, it is more crucial to be friends with teammates rather than just co-workers. We usually do not hide things from friends and this is even more important in working. A team could achieve a better result when information is fully shared within the team. I remembered there was one incident when going out to a client with a workmate. The client called me at 11pm for a change in the report when I was sleeping at that time. I hurried to wake me up and made myself ready to modify the report and realized I could not finish it alone in such a short period of time. I had to call my workmate at 12pm. He asked me in anger: what’s up, don’t tell me it’s anything about work. I replied: No, totally not. It’s just about friendship; do me a favor, as a friend. With his help, we finished at 5am. Before I finished the internship, that workmate said to me: Hey, I really enjoyed working with you and you made me realize that friendship could help in work this far.

Important though, presenting work in high quality, developing authentic friendship with workmates, it meant much more to me that I found my real interest during that internship. As I mentioned in Personal Background, I majored in Electrical Engineering in the undergrad school and in Electrical and Electronic of Engineering in the first half year in my graduate school, Duke University. I could do well and probably get GPA of 3.8 or 3.9, but I never found happiness in those tasks or projects, nor in my undergrad school. After this internship, I realized that talking with people, doing business with human beings rather than cold machines offered me a sense of a bigger accomplishment, especially when clients sincerely talked to me in a goodbye party: Hey, we really want to thank you for your efforts in making us a better company and we look forward to working with you in the future. This is a completely different feeling, a feeling of accomplishment that I’ve never experienced when dealing with machines, when someone just went talk to me: Hey, well done and here is your next mission.

As I said, after realizing my real passion is to do business with human beings, I wished I could pursue the career path of consulting. MEM Program armed me with the basic sense of business and some specialized knowledge, like Financial Accounting. Particularly, I want to thank my teacher of Financial Accounting, C.J. Skender, who made mysterious and sophisticated accounting knowledge understandable and practical for me. Therefore, I applied for several consulting companies as well as some financial area firms. Till now, I received offers from Pwc, KPMG and CIECC. I haven’t made up my mind entering any of them because I’m still waiting offers from Bank of People’s Republic of China and Citi Back. However, I think either of them would make a perfect choice for me.

After I demonstrated many of my strong suits, I also noticed some of my weaknesses that I’d like to improve in the near future. One of which is that I lack the ability to make a perfect time control. It happened to me quite a lot that I devoted too much time doing one thing while have little time left to do another. I think a good approach to improve is to make a reasonable estimation and set up a strict timeline. By setting up fixed amount of time on a particular project, I could allow for more time for the upcoming projects. Another issue that I need to pay more attention to is that I should perform a better work-life balance. When I was busy, I wish I could have 30 hours a day and put 29 hours on work, 1 hour on sleeping. It turns out to be totally wrong! First, my weight goes up from 70kg to 80kg. Second, I have less time going out with friends and enjoy the beauty of life. Therefore, I think I have to set up a daily events calendar to ensure

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