Internship Spotlight: The Importance of Asking Questions

Tell me about your internship! What are your responsibilities? What projects are you working on over the summer?

I have various technical training sessions and various technical meetings. In terms of my work, I’m assigned to a team of data scientists and engineers, and they have me working on model monitoring. The data scientist makes a model and I help monitor and report how that model is doing. I have a manager, other peer mentors, and others around to assist me at Travelers. I have a presentation that is going to summarize all of my work at the end of my internship.

What is the most important thing you have learned thus far?

The most important thing I’ve learned is that you shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions. Even if it seems like a dumb question, it shows your manager or supervisors that you care enough to get the information right more than you care about your pride or look dumb. The best thing you can do is reach out and lean on your superiors or coworkers for help.

How did your school work prepare you for this role?

I would say my school work prepared me by having group assignments where I would have to get used to a group setting similar to the group I work with right now. Additionally, other technical skills and various programming languages have been helpful. There's been a couple of classes like the database class or other classes that they have in the data science curriculum.

How did you become interested in computer science and your specific areas of interest?

I became interested in the computer science and data science field because it’s a really hot topic and there are a lot of jobs and a lot of potential. I’m really interested in machine learning. A really big buzzword right now is ChatGPT and everything that comes with neural networks is really interesting. What some of the data scientists are able to do with their models is super interesting and I think that I want to pursue that and become a data scientist.

What are your future career goals? How has this position impacted your goals?

My future goal after I graduate is to get a full-time job. I think this position will help me do that and could directly lead to a full-time job. They have a full-time program that I will interview for during my internship. I think that's directly applicable to getting a job outside the internship. I would say they trained me by giving me people skills and getting me into the meat of the projects with this internship.

What advice would you give to someone pursuing a similar internship in the future?

I went to the career fair and I talked to as many recruiters as possible. It’s definitely worth it to put yourself out there and attend both of the career fair days. And don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions about the internship. I also think it is really important in your junior and senior year to go to the career fair, because some recruiters at the career fair only look for juniors and seniors.