Name: Bobby Yost
Type of Project: Internship
1.
My STEP Signature Project was a software engineering internship with GE Digital in Cincinnati, Ohio. GE Digital is the software-focused arm of the multi-national conglomerate General Electric. From May 21st to August 17th I was a part of the SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) and Analytics division of the CoreTech division of GE Digital. I helped develop software that performed data gathering and analysis on GE’s computational infrastructure and developed some internal facing websites to help visualize some of this data.
Not much changed about my view about the world, but I did get a better feeling for my goals post-graduation and got a better idea of what’s important to me – what my values are. For most of my life I’ve been an extremely driven individual and was willing to sacrifice anything to get ahead/succeed. I grew up in a divorced family where both parents financially struggled, which caused me stress that some of my more financially well-off peers may not have had to deal with. Eventually I learned to use this stress as a motivating force to succeed and not be in the situation that my parents have both been in most of their lives. This has worked fairly well until somewhat recently.
2.
Over this summer I learned the importance of relationships – in all aspects, and the importance of balance. I still am driven, but I’m not so willing to sacrifice everything to get where I want to be. I don’t have to rush to succeed – I have a full life ahead of me to get to where I want, but there are relationships I could miss out with those around me that could be far more impactful than getting to any job position. Ultimately, I learned that I need to establish a better work-life balance moving forward if I want to be happy. In addition, I learned that I should also attempt to go down other avenues for fulfillment, such as volunteering (through suggestions from coworkers).
3.
There aren’t any specific events I had over the span of my internship that were very impactful, rather a thread of small things that transformed me piece by piece. The outside-of-work events that I went to with all of my co-workers were what really solidified the feelings I had forming throughout the internship (about the changing of my values). Being able to spend time casually with those I worked with without it being weird is not something I thought possible but I was pleasantly surprised.
There were a few group outings/activities I can remember that stood out in affecting me. The first of which was an outing at Top Golf, which is essentially a golf range combined with a sports bar. I’m not really a huge fan of golfing, so I was surprised that I still managed to have a great time. The golfing was alright, but the part that I remember most fondly is the conversations I had with my co-worker about more casual topics, learning more about them and their interests. Other activities that had a similar effect were a Reds game and hanging out at a coworkers townhouse on their roof.
The relationships and interactions I had with my co-workers are what most directly caused a change in my values. I still don’t quite understand why it lead to a change in heart, but I think it has to do with the fact that working everyday with them made work not feel like work. I was able to be friends with everyone on the team, and for the most part everyone else felt the same way. Being able to talk collaboratively rather than argumentatively when conflicting ideas came up was extremely helpful in helping us deliver the products we were working on with a high velocity – the only blockers we really faced were external, meaning with other teams.
4.
Ultimately, I think being able to form healthy relationships with the people I work with and having that vastly improve my experience at work helped me realize that I may have been missing out these past few years where I’ve been solely focused on success career-wise. While the largest change has been with the way I view the relationships in my life, I’ve come out of this internship appreciating balance for all aspects of my life. For most of my life I’ve identified as career-focused but with this Summer ironically this specific step in my career has convinced me that there’s more to living a good life than just financial success.
I’d say this change has affected me in a fairly fundamental way. Rather than striving solely for success, from now on I plan to strive for fulfillment. With this change in my values I’ve got a lot more to consider now when making any large and important choices. I believe that having this better understanding of my values will lead me down that path to fulfillment.
