Over the past summer, I completed a ten-week internship at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center as a Buckeye Diversity Summer Intern. This experience provided me with an in-depth look at the inner workings of a hospital and the opportunity to explore various healthcare roles. It allowed me to gain valuable insights into the medical field and helped me further assess my aspiration to become a physician.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve aspired to become a physician. However, at the core of this desire is my passion for helping others, and I recognize that there are many ways to make a meaningful impact in healthcare beyond being a doctor. During my internship, I had the chance to shadow a wide range of clinical healthcare professionals, including nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, nurse practitioners, case managers, psychologists, and pharmacists, among others.

This diverse shadowing experience provided me with a comprehensive understanding of each role and its specific scope of practice. It was incredibly valuable in helping me recognize why these professions aren’t the right fit for me and solidified my commitment to pursuing a career as a physician. Additionally, it deepened my appreciation for the collaborative nature of interdisciplinary care and the essential contributions of each discipline.

I also had the chance to interact with individuals in non-clinical roles, which was an eye-opening experience, as I had never considered these positions before. Learning about the extensive behind-the-scenes efforts required to keep a hospital running was both surprising and fascinating, especially seeing how detail-oriented and multifaceted these operations are.

Furthermore, I enjoyed speaking with clinical staff members who also held leadership or operational roles within the medical center. Witnessing this kind of duality was intriguing, as I hadn’t realized it was possible to blend clinical expertise with operational leadership. This insight was exciting because it showed me the potential to balance both clinical practice and operational involvement in my future career.

This experience has reaffirmed my commitment to becoming a physician, and I am determined not to let any obstacles deter me from this path. I’ve come to realize that my personality and strengths are best suited for the role of a physician, where I can take on leadership and decision-making responsibilities. This self-awareness, cultivated throughout my college journey, has solidified my determination to pursue a career in medicine.

This is a picture of me with my three mentors: —Laura Stillion, Amanda Lucas, and Olivia Vance.

For eleven weeks, I worked as a buying intern in Los Angeles, California, for The TJX Companies in their Pet Department. I participated in vendor appointments, business analysis, and extracting key information from the data systems. Additionally, I analyzed a leading pet vendor and their performance within the company stores for my independent project.

Throughout this time, I developed as a working professional within the buying career. I began my internship with limited knowledge about the buying process and career responsibilities. I learned about the data systems utilized, different approaches to the buying process, and the importance of buyer/vendor relationships. This experience shifted and expanded my understanding of what it means to be a buyer. Prior to this internship, I had a high-level view of the role, with the idea that buying was simply purchasing products from vendors. However, I quickly discovered that the role of a buyer is much more complex and strategic.

As I participated in training and meetings, I gained insight into the many aspects of buying and its connection to other sections of the company. I visited many of our stores, competition stores, home office, and distribution centers. In my day-to-day tasks, I learned how to utilize pivot tables and databases to extract the information specific to the task I was working on. Through participation in vendor meetings, I learned the importance of maintaining positive, strong relationships with vendors. Communication between buyer and vendor is key and can be a delicate process to preserve the relationship through negotiation. 

During my STEP Signature Project, the immersive experience of working closely with an experienced buyer at TJX was pivotal in shaping my professional growth. I was assigned to a buyer who has been with The TJX Companies for sixteen years. Through my time with her, she shared much of her industry knowledge and career advice that significantly influenced my understanding of the buying career path. Shadowing her allowed me to experience all stages of the buying process, from planning for seasonal trends to negotiating with vendors, and closing the final order. This involvement in daily meetings and decision-making processes allowed me to learn each aspect of buying and become comfortable with the job requirements.

The variety of activities I participated in during this internship further expanded my knowledge. Attending vendor appointments, participating in in-store visits, and conducting competition shopping offered a complete view of the buying career path at TJX. These activities allowed me to see how various elements of the overall business connect and how decisions are made in response to trends and customer behavior.

The weekly training sessions and the opportunity to travel to the home office in Framingham, Massachusetts, were key opportunities to experience the work environment at TJX. The training activities provided valuable insights into different teams within the company, such as logistics and planning and allocation. The visit to the home office allowed me to interact with the East Coast team and collaborate with them in regard to specific vendors and products. The exposure to the home office allowed me to fully understand the TJX company culture and environment.

These experiences contributed to a significant transformation in my professional outlook, specifically in regard to the buying career. The combination of direct mentorship, training activities, and exposure to various sections of the business expanded my understanding of the industry and my potential career path. The skills and industry insights gained through this project have been very insightful as I plan my next steps into the retail industry.

This change is significant to my life because the internship provided me with a complete understanding of the buying profession and the company culture at TJX. Working as an intern allowed me to develop important hard skills such as market analysis, vendor negotiation, and inventory management, while also refining my soft skills in communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. These skills are not only important for a career at TJX but are useful across various careers, making me more knowledgeable and competitive in the job market.

Finally, the opportunity to build connections with industry professionals and peers has proven invaluable. These relationships have provided me with insights and guidance that will be key as I navigate my career path. The connections I’ve established could lead to future collaboration, mentorship, and potential job offers. This experience has assisted with reaching my academic and professional goals, as it has provided new knowledge about my career aspirations and provided me with the skills necessary to potentially pursue a successful career in buying.

Here I am presenting my final analysis of a vendor to the California Buying Office. (Please note that company data has been removed from the image)

Kobie Parrish, lower middle, pictured with other interns at iTech AG.

By: Kobie Parrish
Dual Degree in Public Affairs and Strategic Communication
Minor in Science and Engineering in the Public Interest (SEPI)

During the summer semester of 2024, I participated in a marketing and communications internship at iTech AG, a tech consultancy firm in Arlington, Virginia. Throughout the internship, I focused on social media development, blog and copywriting and conducting competitor analyses to strengthen the iTech AG brand. 

This was my first dedicated marketing and communications internship, and I learned a lot about the processes used to brainstorm, execute and monitor marketing campaigns for a specific industry. I learned what it means to keep brand guidelines, mission statements and values in my work as I designed, wrote, and generated material for iTech AG. I worked alongside my team and was an active member of the process. I helped bring new ideas to the table, like a social media plan for their Instagram and found topics to write about for their website blog section. Working on these various deliverables made me feel more confident about my ability to work in public relations and communications, confirming my desire to pursue a career in this industry. 

Alongside strengthening my communication and PR skills, I learned what it meant to work in a company that is a government contractor as iTech AG provided technology services to federal agencies and departments. I worked alongside other employees and interns on very high-level technical projects. I learned what it means to be in tech consulting and what processes are used in client work to help service implementation. This included learning about a popular software service called ServiceNow, a leading service that supports clients with IT service management and various other IT aspects. I learned a great deal of technical information, including work process terms like agile, sprints, scrum teams and more, which are all used depending on the type of consulting. While I am a PR-orientated individual, I can work in the tech consultancy industry, know what kind of work is done and apply it to my PR work for a tech consultancy firm. 

When I was accepted as an intern at iTech AG, I was the company’s first marketing and communications intern. That allowed me to have a unique experience where I could also shape the role and work on various projects that interested me. One project I worked on included a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. This project took me a week to work on and had me focus on the iTech AG brand and six of its other major competitors. I applied processes I had learned from my strategic communication courses at Ohio State to this project and found several interesting things in my research. Afterward, I was able to organize my research and spent roughly 40 minutes presenting it to the marketing team. Our marketing team was very impressed, and our marketing director even said that my research and presentation were more in-depth and extensive than what they had seen other PR firms do. This strengthened my confidence in my ability to work in this industry, confirming that this is the type of work that I want to do post-graduation. 

Alongside the SWOT analysis, a notable skill I acquired was the ability to translate high-level, complex technical information into social media copy that could be understood by both clients and the general public. The client teams at iTech AG wanted the marketing team to promote various aspects of the work done for clients. Those teams provided us with documents highlighting the high-level work done. As someone like me who has never worked in the tech consulting industry, I had to learn the specific terms and processes and how they could be communicated in an understandable way to general audiences. This was a notable experience because it gave me valuable knowledge of the tech consulting industry. It made me realize that, as PR individuals, we are essentially “translators” for different industries and audiences. 

Lastly, working with my team was a notable experience in that I now know what to look for when applying for jobs. Our team consisted of about five unique individuals, all focusing on various marketing and communication aspects that strengthened the iTech AG brand together. They supported me as an intern and treated me with respect while giving me comprehensive and engaging work. My manager would meet with me at the beginning of each week to discuss what projects I would be working on and meet periodically to review completed items. The marketing team overall gave me great constructive feedback that allowed me to learn and grow as an individual in the field. We also all got to know each other personally, sharing details of our lives outside of work that made us feel more like a team rather than drones going on about their work. They all supported me, and I was happy to be viewed as one of their team members. Together, this has given me something to look for when looking for jobs down the road, as I want to ensure that I find a team that supports me and is genuinely interested in me as an individual. 

This experience has been transformative for me as it was the first time my work as an intern was entirely focused on the communications field. Since enrolling as a student at Ohio State, I have been able to apply the knowledge and lessons learned in courses in the work that I was doing. It confirmed that the time I am spending in my courses is worthwhile and that it is preparing me for a successful career in communications and public relations work. It gave me something to look for after graduation, and I have found a work style that suits my interests. I was a part of a team that cared about and respected me as an individual. I now want to work for a place like iTech AG that is supportive and allows me to explore various innovative topics that can strengthen the brand I am working with. Professionally, I am now more equipped to work in this industry and bring my experiences to other roles that I will be in.

I have already accepted another marketing and communications internship at the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) for the fall and spring semesters. I am already applying the lessons I learned from this summer’s internship experience to the work I am doing now. As time goes on, I expect this summer’s experience to continue to impact my decisions positively and will continue to build on my knowledge in this industry overall. Completing this internship, thanks to the support of organizations like STEP, allowed me to pursue my interests and gain a remarkable, transformative experience that will support me for years to come. 

For my STEP Signature Project, I had an engineering internship with the Ohio EPA Division of Drinking and Ground Waters. I began my full-time internship position on May 20th and am continuing to work part time during the school year. My main responsibilities involve reviewing plans for water treatment plant system upgrades.

While completing my STEP Signature Project, I gained a much deeper understanding of how drinking water is treated and what it means to work for the government. Before this internship, my knowledge of drinking water plants and the distribution system was limited to what I had learned in class. During my internship, I had hands-on experience working with drinking water plant plans, water quality data, and went on numerous site visits. Through this experience I have a much deeper understanding of the various stages of the water treatment train.

My internship with the EPA also exposed me to the inner workings of a government agency. One of my main roles during my internship was to review plans for water treatment plant proposed upgrades with a focus on ensuring that the plans complied with state policies. This experience showed me the impact that working in the public sector has on communities and the importance of regulatory standards to protect public health and safety.

One of the most transformative experiences during my STEP Signature Project was attending site visits to multiple water treatment plants across Ohio. These tours provided me with a firsthand look at the different processes and equipment in operation which significantly deepened my understanding of drinking water treatment. I found that this experience was also valuable when it came to my work reviewing plans. I am now able to better visualize and understand the layouts of the engineering drawings.

These tours also highlighted the diversity among water treatment plants across different regions of Ohio. It was interesting to see the differences in methods and processes used based on the whether the primary water source for the plant was surface water or groundwater. It was also fascinating to see how each plant differed based on the unique needs of the community whether it was varying water quality, resource availability, or the population size. This experience not only deepened my technical knowledge from classes, but also further showed me how important engineering is in protecting public and ecological health.

Another important aspect of my internship was the relationships with my supervisor and the engineers on my team. Everyone in my division was super knowledgeable about the field and their willingness to mentor me bettered my understanding of water treatment. I also had the opportunity to sit in on meetings where the team was making alterations to state regulatory standards. Their attention to detail emphasized the importance of the government’s role in protecting public health and has interested me to pursue a future career in the public sector.

This transformation is significant because it has confirmed my decision to study environmental engineering. Seeing firsthand the impact that engineering can have on public health and safety has solidfied my commitment to pursuing a career in engineering. This experience has also helped to shape my career goals because it sparked an interest in working within the public sector after graduation. Not only have I gained a better understanding of the water treatment processes and the regulatory standards, but I strengthen my technical skills necessary for my future career.

For my STEP Signature Project, I worked as an electrical/software engineer intern at rpGatta inc. in Aurora, Ohio. Primarily, rpGatta specializes in designing, building and delivering custom manufacturing equipment to suit their customers’ needs. By being an intern, I was able to make significant contributions to projects through drawing electrical schematics for these machines which will soon be used in mass production. Between tasks, I also wrote scripts to automate some of these schematics to reduce the time some drawings would take by up to 95%.

Ever since I started studying engineering, no matter how much I learned, I had one incredibly important question that I have been trying to answer. Of course, in my ECE coursework, I have learned a great deal about electronics and programming, to the point that I have a fundamental understanding of how most of the pieces of a computer work. However, I still could not grasp how it is possible that a team of any size could reasonably make a machine as complex as a Macbook, for example. I understand how the processor works, I understand how the speakers work, I understand how the operating system works, but I struggled to fathom the process where the machine goes from being a mere idea, to being a functional device in mass production. Through my internship, I was able to work on projects in various stages of development, which gave me a much better understanding of different aspects of the development process.

The real “aha” moment where I felt I was closer to my goal of understanding the design process was that in many of my previous pursuits, progress was made through somewhat disjunct groups trying to scrap things together that work to an extent, and the design would naturally follow. I have noticed that this approach has severe flaws, because a device which is not first designed will not work. What I realized at my internship is that on these projects, the device was designed long before any synthesis was begun. With a fundamental design that everyone is aware of, the engineers have a clear idea of what they are trying to create, and what specifications their work must meet. It seems so obvious in hindsight, but as engineering students I think that my peers and I are too accustomed to schoolwork, which encourages students to attack their work head on with no plan and no research, only going back to reiterate when their result is clearly unacceptable.

To be clear, the no design approach generally works fine for small assignments like homework where time spent planning and researching typically wouldn’t be all that beneficial, and that time is also typically better spent just doing the work. Once applied to a larger engineering project, this “homework approach” unfortunately sets the engineers up to fail, and the project to fall behind. A phrase often heard in engineering is “fail fast”, which is relevant here. The caveat to this is that engineering students often are hesitant to go back further than simple debugging of a device, therefore they do not allow themselves to fail. As an analogy, this would be like having a house that is falling apart as it is built, and fixing these issues as they come up, not realizing that there is no foundation to build on.

The concept of strategizing before execution is nothing new. It’s even been said by Sun Tzu, “strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Even though Sun Tzu was probably not referring to engineering, the point still rings true that planning must precede action. In most projects this takes the form of some kind of architecture and specifications, gantt charts and deadlines. Essentially, being able to truly understand the meaning to the madness of managing an engineering project has made me more accepting of such things and has made me better off as I am put into more leadership positions in the teams I work with.

Fortunately, this increased understanding of project management and leadership in engineering has coincided with my extracurriculars quite well, as I was recently promoted to captain for Buckeye Autodrive, which is a motorsports team at OSU which does research in autonomous vehicles. This knowledge will be indispensable as I manage the progress of various aspects of our team and design and test new parts of our pipeline. In the long term, I believe that this experience will make me a better candidate for positions in industry which play towards my strengths and will hopefully lead to a more successful career for me overall. For now, though, I must lead my team to victory, and stop reading “The Art of War” instead of doing my homework.

Note: I was not permitted to take any photos while at my internship to protect confidential information.

This summer, I had the opportunity to intern at Chick-fil-A’s headquarters in Atlanta, GA. During my time there as a digital transformation and technology analyst, I was fortunate to be on the launch of CFA’s E-Commerce platform. Outside of my project work, I was immersed in a unique culture, meeting people, and developing personally and professionally. 

Since beginning my STEP Signature project, my understanding of myself has changed dramatically. Before I began, I was interested in starting my career in a city other than my hometown, Chicago. I figured that 3 months living in Atlanta would be a fantastic way to gauge how I felt. Although I had an amazing experience this summer, I can confidently say that Chicago is where I want to be to start my career.

A set of assumptions of mine that I had which went through a significant transformation was of the South. This summer was really the first time I ever experienced the South. I tried to go in with the least amount of expectations, but coming from the midwest, it is difficult to not think of hospitality, fried food, religion, etc. After my experience, I can now have informed opinions about what it is really like. What was abundantly clear is that family, religion, and manners are the most closely-held values. 

There were several events and interactions that led to these transformations. I will begin with why I am now set on living in Chicago post-graduation. First, I underestimated what it was like to live without any friends and family. While I believe my experience in doing so was valuable, I think that there is more opportunity for me in Chicago. These are opportunities that would lead to my quicker development professionally and personally. The interactions that made this clear was how little I related to many of my peers, colleagues, and others. We came from starkly different backgrounds, making it much more difficult to attain introductions and other important opportunities. 

There were many events and interactions that led to the formation of my, now informed, view of the South. I will begin with the value that people held closest; family. There were three interns who were engaged or married. Almost every person I spoke to kept their family top-of-mind. This is very different from my experience in the Midwest and East Coast. While family is important in those regions, the South truly felt like it was another level. 

This internship was essential to my personal and professional development. Having experience at such a mature and successful company truly gave me a unique perspective as I begin my career. It also contained lots of project work that is very applicable to my coursework. I can now approach my classes with relevant experience and can therefore learn at a more rapid pace. All in all, this experience was hugely transformational for me. It would not have been possible without the STEP program.

Over the summer I worked at Worthington Steel as an Environmental Health and Safety Intern. For this position, I focus on assisting the EHS director on projects revolving around compliance assurance, incident reduction, and program consistency between sites. I also spent time shadowing Worthington Steel’s Corporate Environmental Analyst.

Me (middle) with my coworker and advisor.

During my time at Worthington Steel, I experienced my first professional position at a company outside of Ohio State University in a field that is related to what I hope to pursue in the future. Being an EHS intern allowed me to see both the environmental compliance and employee safety side of manufacturing, which greatly assisted in my understanding of what aspects of sustainability truly interest me. I realized over the summer that I am passionate about environmental compliance and improvements to corporate and plant-specific sustainability. Being my first full-time job, this experience also helped me better understand how to schedule working forty hours a week and let me get a taste of working in a professional setting. From buying professional clothes to getting used to working with colleagues in a setting outside of classes, this internship better prepared me for my transition to the professional world.

As mentioned earlier, my experience at Worthington Steel enhanced my passion for environmental compliance and improving a company’s sustainability efforts. Two specific times over the summer solidified this. One of the first projects I worked on was inputting environmental metrics data into the software they use in order to track their usage for each quarter. This involved compiling data on water, electric, natural gas, propane, and waste that the plant I worked at used and inputting that data onto a spreadsheet to submit to corporate. This was a very interesting project as I was able to get experience collecting and analyzing data as well as work with other plant personnel in order to retrieve the latest numbers and ensure they were accurate.

Another opportunity I had at Worthington Steel was to shadow their environmental analyst as she showed me what her projects usually consist of as well as see firsthand what drafting their yearly sustainability report entailed. This is a profession that interests me more than EHS specifically, so it was great to see the day-to-day of an environmental analyst and their major projects. I also got to interact with other members of the corporate sustainability team at Worthington Steel while shadowing and they shared valuable information on how to approach getting into a similar position as them. These two opportunities gave me an inside view into the work that my major deals with on a daily basis.

Working in a professional experience for the first time was a big switch from my usual time at university or the part-time jobs I worked at during school. With a set schedule that remained the same or very similar each day of the week, it was a welcome change of pace from the sporadic schedule of college and part-time work. It was also nice to come home after work and not have to worry about additional assignments or projects until I clocked in the next day. I know this is not always the case especially as you progress in the professional world, but for an intern or someone in an entry-level position, this should be the norm. There were also additional work events I attended that helped me assimilate into the Worthington Steel culture and grow closer to those I worked with. Many different aspects of the internship changed my view of my future and what I hope to do with my career.

This experience was greatly valuable in the sense that it has better prepared me for my future in the professional world. Having an internship is a great head start when looking for a job post-graduation and will help me stand out against my peers. The internship at Worthington Steel has also shared with me valuable information about the sustainability field such as environmental metrics reporting and writing sustainability reports. Knowledge of working in an office setting also showed me what I am in store for when I make my way into the job market. The internship also showed that EHS is not necessarily the field that I hope to pursue but also gave me sneak peeks into other fields that have sparked my interests such as corporate sustainability and environmental analysis. Overall, my time at Worthington Steel this summer was a great opportunity and I am more than grateful I was able to experience it.

This summer, I spent 10 weeks as an Operations Intern with a 3PL organization, ODW Logistics, where I worked in one of their Columbus warehouses alongside their floor supervisors, operations managers, general managers, and director. I had an internship-long project in which I optimized our labor utility, so my day-to-day tasks were very big-picture oriented. I also spent time in the corporate office one day per week to hone in on the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, as well as learn from my mentors in the Continuous Improvement and IT teams.

This internship helped me to showed me how much more I can and need to grow as a professional, and more importantly, as an individual. Up until this summer, over the last 3 years, I’ve spent 9 months of the year away from my home in Virginia. This summer marked the first time I wasn’t going to go home for the summer; I was going to spend my first full year away from my family and friends back home. I didn’t view it as a challenge or a problem, my thought process was just that it would be a new experience, and a new experience it was!

I had more responsibilities than ever before, and I learned to better hold myself accountable ot my schedule and goals. I’ve always thought of myself to be responsible and accountable, but for the first time, I experienced what it was like to have a full-time job; and I realized I needed to grow. This internship gave me a glimpse into what the world is like to be a real, working adult, which is only one school year away for me. It helped teach me how to maintain my physical and mental shape while still working full-time, it showed me the importance of finding a work-life balance, even as an intern, and it prepared me for the experience of truly living alone. When looking into my future as a working adult, I felt uncertain, but after my internship I now feel incredibly prepared for what’s to come.

Plenty of factors influenced my transformation over the summer: events like my living conditions, activities like reading Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, and interactions with fresh graduates and relationships with my mentors during my internship.

Regarding my living conditions, I lived alone in my off-campus, 5-bedroom and 2-bath house. It helped me build a level of accountability that kept me in check for doing my house’s upkeep. I realized that now being the only person in the house, utility costs would be higher, so I needed to reduce my usage. It also clicked that normal household projects and chores were solely mine to maintain, so I learned to have more accountability in terms of keeping my living situation in good condition. Additionally, learning from the 7 Habits helped me to expand on positive habits that I had already drawn my own conclusions on. While I didn’t necessarily learn anything new, spending an hour and a half every Monday for ten weeks was very helpful in making those habits more prevalent in my life, so that I can transform into a better functioning adult and professional.

As I spent more time at my internship, I continued to meet a spectrum of experienced professionals, from new grads/hires to the C-suite, I had plenty of meetings that rounded out my summer experience. On the first day of my internship, I had the opportunity to get acquainted with all the freshly recruited graduates, and I was left with a fantastic impression. I then spent many hours in one-on-one meetings with them where they offered both their paths and their perspectives. I learned the struggles and solutions to adapting to a new lifestyle as a full-time professional. I also had a personal mentor as well as mentors in the Continuous Improvement and IT teams, which were key in aligning my career goals for the future and giving me the confidence to pursue multiple paths. My personal mentor, Brian Priebe, gave me the best perspective I could ask for. He has a unique path to get where he is now, and we shared many similar interests, which have given me a new look at how I can approach building my career path. Finally, bright and early every Monday morning, I would meet with a member of the C-suite, where we would discuss their path, their experiences, and what they’ve done to succeed both in and out of work. These mentorships and conversations, combined with making the jump to living alone and putting in effort to make use of the 7 Habits has helped me to transform into a better, more prepared (and ready) version of myself.

This transformation is very significant for my life because it’s a catalyst for immediate success post-graduation. By becoming a more responsible, accountable, and prepared person now, I’m creating a faultless path by being easily adaptable to a changing landscape. This transformation has already proved successful: I’ve already received a return offer from this summer’s internship and I’m applying to full-time roles as early as last week. The proactive choice to apply for jobs this early is going to be very helpful towards my professional goals and future plans because it gives me a leg up on every other graduating senior in the country. Additionally, this transformation matters to my professional goals because it will make them easier to achieve and will keep me pushing for more and more success. Simply being more prepared for my next step as a professional and as an adult will have a ripple effect that will propel me to succeed more than I would’ve without this transformation, without this project.

A very small section of the warehouse that I worked in!