For my STEP project, I was able to work an internship this past spring semester at an Architecture and Design firm, Design Collective Incorporated, where I was able to get first-hand experience on what I want to do professionally when I graduate. This was my first work experience in my major, and STEP gave me the extra support I needed to really focus and engage with this valuable experience of learning the design process and all the things that go into creating the end result.

During this experience, I found out that although I had a good foundation of skills that I have gained in class, there was so much to the industry that I wouldn’t have been able to understand until I was out there experiencing it. I realized how much more technical things went into a project from start to finish. In school, design is all about creativity and projects that usually don’t have a limitation in things like budget, client taste, structural requirements, etc., which is something that is highly considered in projects. In school, as we are given projects, you don’t really see the client side of designing. In my projects in school, I’ve designed for hypothetical clients, but all the decisions I made are ones I think are the best decisions and have no feedback from the client. This opportunity really showed me how involved the client is in the process, and how important their feedback and thoughts are in order to make such an impactful design that blends what you want and what they need together.

This experience also taught me about myself how important it is to be honest about what I know, and very honest about what I don’t. I think going into it, I thought I would be much more prepared from school to jump in, but I learned quickly that there are so many things that I hadn’t had the chance to learn in classes yet. I’m always one especially to want to know how to do everything and be good at what I’m doing, but here I learned the power of being honest and asking questions, because it benefitted me the most in the long run and I was able to learn things from people who had all been in my place before.

There were so many valuable experiences and people who helped guide me in this transformational experience. When thinking about my experience from start to finish, I remember in the beginning just watching and learning from people who were willing to help me that really allowed me to get off on the right foot at Design Collective. I began with more simple tasks, and having people show me different tips and examples of what the tasks were and the easiest way to do them, and how they help get the project get to the overall result. I was able to help with small things in construction documents, learning how these documents instruct the contractors to bring the project to life. A couple times I was able to go to a site where a project was under construction and see how the little detail items I would make really helped them understand how exactly things were meant to be built and see how the details on these documents and the diagrams and notes become this language from a designer and client’s vision to those constructing it.

As time went on, I was able to do more and more as I was getting used to the tasks, and just being in the working environment I was able to pick up on things much quicker than watching videos or lectures in the classroom. After being more knowledgeable of how the design process works, and getting practice in various activities, I was able to go to a client meeting and be involved in those very first steps to understand what they need in the space, and what they would like the end result to come to. This was a super transformative experience because I felt the respect that I had worked hard for and felt very connected to the project I then was able to work on. I was able to take notes on what they said they needed and translate it into space plans and proposals for their future office. This was my first experience being involved in a client meeting and then getting to translate this into my own independent work. This was one of my favorite experiences due to the way that it made me feel like I was directly making an impact and making choices that had the client’s needs and wants on the forefront of my decision making which is something I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do without Design Collective and STEP.

Lastly, one of the biggest transformative factors to this experience was the support I received from my STEP mentor at Design Collective. She always included me in experiences and brought me to do some really amazing things. She brought me to meetings where I was able to network with other people in the various parts of the industry and was there to always answer questions or give me support in any way possible. In the beginning of my internship, I wasn’t sure how important things like networking was, or how important it is to meeting furniture dealers, or carpet and textile reps, but I learned through her how important these people are as well and how building a good relationship is, because they are the people who contribute to making our vision come to life.

This experience, to say the least, was completely transformative and really has helped propel me to a great start in the industry I am passionate about. This experience introduced me to people, activities, and tasks that I wouldn’t have been able to receive any experience in without working first-hand in the field. I was able to take what I was learning as time was going by and continue to apply it to future activities and build upon my knowledge. I can now take some of these skills and apply them to my projects, specifically my capstone project this fall as I now have a new way of looking at projects, and I have learned so much from seeing how my coworkers approach a project, and how they are involved from beginning to end. This experience was just the beginning of a great career I feel more confident that I can go on to have. As this experience was coming to an end, I was actually able to apply to a global interior design and architecture firm where I will be working at their headquarters in Seattle Washington. I feel as though my experience at Design Collective was the reason that I was a strong candidate, because of all the things I was able to say I was involved with and the knowledge that it gave me in the industry. This semester was the most transformative one so far for my professional life and academic life, and I am so grateful to Design Collective for the experiences, and STEP for the support they provided me as this experience is already opening doors to the places I dream to go.

1. My STEP Project was an internship with Sarnova, a company located in Dublin, OH. For my internship, I worked as a part of the IT Support team for Sarnova, which is a company that supplies necessary medical equipment to private and public companies. My main responsibilities were to close tickets by troubleshooting computer hardware and software issues. This included repairing and installing programs, troubleshooting network connections, and fixing hardware issues such as the internal computer speaker.
2.  Throughout my internship, the biggest personal growth I accomplished was that I became more comfortable asking for help when needed. I learned that it was necessary to ask others for help, especially when I didn’t know how to do things, and I learned that most of the time people are willing to give a hand and teach you how to do new things. It changed my understanding of the business world because the senior leadership team was always very welcoming to me, and invited me to reach out if I ever had questions or needed anything. This experience perfected my skills communicating with others and recognizing when to ask for help. I overcame some of my personal anxieties about being rejected because I realized that most of the time, people like to help out if they can. This change was crucial to my professional growth because it prepared me to be confident in interviews and to feel comfortable asking for what I need.
3. The relationships I had with my team were monumental in helping the transformation that I described in #2. The IT Support Team was a small, close knit team, so I was fortunate to have a good relationship with all of the other team members. I had a good relationship with the other intern, which we formed because of an important project that we worked on together at the beginning of our internship. Our internship started about the same time that the pandemic and quarantine began, which caused our company to transition to working from home. The first project that we worked on was setting up laptops for all of the other employees so that they were able to efficiently work from home. We worked long hours together and were able to complete the project a month earlier than the anticipated end date. This helped us form a close bond from the get go, and it was comforting to feel like there was someone else that I could ask for help. With that, the senior support analysts on the team were helpful when I had to close tickets. Our team worked primarily from a ticket queue, which received requests ranging from a program install to fixing an application that wouldn’t open. The senior staff on the team was helpful in answering any questions I had and even accommodated for working remotely by screen-sharing to show me how to troubleshoot an issue. I’m grateful for all of the things they taught me over the 10 months of my internship because it allowed me to have a much better understanding of technology. They also helped me with interpersonal communication by proofreading emails, newsletter articles, and instructional documents to make sure that they made sense to others.
4. This personal development matters because it helped me gain confidence in myself and my abilities. At the beginning of the internship, I was not comfortable solving many of the technical issues because I was afraid that I would do something wrong. By the end of my internship, I felt confident in the skills that I had learned, and felt proud of how much I had learned over a short period of time. This development matters in both my professional and personal life, because it also helped me realize that I needed to give myself credit for all of the things I accomplished. Working from home during the pandemic hindered my confidence in myself because it felt like I was doing mostly independent work. I didn’t feel that I was accomplishing enough because I was working alone and didn’t have others around me to verbally acknowledge what I was doing. Through a heart to heart conversation with my supervisor, he recognized the work I had accomplished during my internship and praised me for how well I was doing and for all of the things I learned. He also said that if I was doing anything wrong, they would ask me about it, which made me feel better at the time. It put things in perspective for me because I realized that I didn’t have to feel overwhelmed with work, when there wasn’t anything I was doing wrong. This advice was one of the most valuable things I learned at my internship because it is also applicable to situations in my personal life. It put situations in my personal relationships and friendships in perspective, to appreciate the things that were going well rather than worrying that I wasn’t enough for other people.