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.