Internship at NTU: 17 March 2014 to 6 June 2014

I thought of posting my feelings about my 12-week worth of internship a day or two after the end of it but I went for a vacation the day after. Hence, I'm writing this after a delay. The post-vacation experience will also be posted here so will update soon.

Back to the topic. I'm a 3rd year student and have to undergo an internship at a company which is course-related. Different courses have different durations. Some may only take 6 weeks while some may take 24 weeks (6 months or half a year). For me, as a Civil Engineering student, 12 weeks of internship is a must. The purpose of this internship...I think I do not need to further explain its purpose but basically it's just want you to be work ready and experience the working life.

Before the Internship

There are different possibilities in which your internship company is decided. It could be your school deciding it for you or it could be you choosing one of the companies listed. Mine was the latter ones. Students have to log in to the portal and there will be a list of companies which they can choose from, up to 3 choices. I chose a R&D company which only offered one place and ranked it as my 1st choice choice. Then, I chose a university as my 2nd choice and another construction company as my 3rd choice. As you have noticed my title, I have posted to a university, NTU or Nanyang Technological University.

Once I knew my posting, I received a log book which looked like this.

Inside the log book, you will have to fill in your particulars. While you are having your internship, any tasks you have done have to be written down. Here's an example.

Apart from that, you will also need to sign your attendance sheet every time you come for work. Any absenteeism will have to be supported by medical certificates. 1 day of absence without approval = 3 days of leave. Once you cannot achieve 90% of attendance, good luck to you! You will have to experience your internship again.

Before the internship starts, there is a seminar which the rules of the internship must be understood and adhered. A letter has to be written to send it to the supervisor of the company, which I struggled as it's been a long time writing that.

When I knew I had to work at NTU, I thought of doing research works and laboratory works but things didn't out that way when the actual internship came.

During the Internship

My working place is near my house, so I only need to take a bus, 179 or 179A. 179A is the express bus service which they skipped all the bus stops at the residential areas, including an MRT station until it reaches the university. It's only available during their term time and things didn't turn out well when it's outside term time. More details below.

I knew which bus to take, which stop to alight.

However, I encountered a problem in which I turned out to be an idiot on the 1st day of my internship. I alighted at the bus stop and saw that building.

Block N1 was my working place. I had to find a Transport and Geospatial Laboratory which is located inside Block N1. As I entered, I walked one whole round and even asked for help. Finally, I found the lab, 1 minute late from 8.30am, the actual working time. On my 1st day, I really didn't know where to exit after my work and again, I walked one whole round and finally found the same bus stop sign until the next day when I found out that...

The lab was located one level above the building after I climbed up the long fleet of stairs from the bus stop. All I have to do was to enter the building and climbed up from B2 to B1 and there it was.

THE LAB!! What was I doing the day before? It was located above and I walked one whole round around the building. I've wasted my time doing that!

Back to the first day at work, there were more than 2 supervisors in the working area. Each supervisor is separated into two groups, the bike-sharing group and the traffic data collection group. I've chosen the latter one because I hate to do interviews and surveys so that group was a no-no to me. My supervisor is a PhD candidate who will be supervising me and the other intern for the Underground Road Systems project. All I have to do for the next 12 weeks...Traffic Data Collection in the lab. It's kind of a monotonous job and would continue over the next 12 weeks but fortunately, I was allowed to surf the net, YouTube, Facebook or whatever during work, provided that the tasks given by them must be completed.

That was my working station. For the next 12 weeks, I would be using the computer to do data collection works. That was the 2nd computer which I have used as the 1st one turned out to be hanged and malfunctioned all the time when it came to the 5th week.

Every week, I have to submit a weekly report on what I have done. Because of the fact that I'm quiet and shy, the average number of pages that I typed for a report was 2. The longest one was 3 (It was supposed to be 4 but my supervisor stopped me from doing that). After that, my supervisor will give a grading. Strangely enough, for the 9 weeks that I have been as an intern, I've gotten an A.........minus. It made me feel like scratching my head all the time. I've never seen an A.........minus for a long time. There's no A- in the grading table. If at the end of the attachment I still got an A-, how would the Liaison Officer (LO) grade me as? A, I think so. Fortunately, for the next 3 weeks, as the supervisor was away, another supervisor took over and graded me an A. So, it's final, it's an A!

As mentioned previously about the 179A not operating outside the term time. What happened for the final 3 weeks was I was late almost everyday, but not that serious, it's just around 2 to 7 minutes. I had to take 179 which is a longer route, covering the residential areas and the MRT station but I feel that it's much more convenient as I can alight at the residential area instead of the bus interchange in which 179A does for skipping all the bus stops outside the university.

Apart from the bus went haywire outside the term time, my lunch went haywire too. Previously during term time, I have many places to go, food courts, fast food restaurants and even a western food bistro. However, The western food bistro closed down before the term officially ended in which I only went 3 times. One of the food court which still operated after term time also closed down. Initially, I thought that it was just to have some spring cleaning or something but it's officially CLOSED DOWN!

Frankly speaking, the foods that they have offered were cheap and delicious. It was just sad to see that closed down during the last week of my internship. Hence, for my final week there, I had no choice but went to eat fast food below the food court. I don't know whether there will be another food court replacing them for the students there to eat. I really hope so. That was just a shocking disaster for it to happen.

At the end of the internship, I used up my time-off and knocked off early. How did I achieve time-off? Although the 12-week internship was like an office job, I did go out for a site visit. I went to the ITS Centre but...again, it was an office job. My job was to transfer all the traffic video files into DVDs. It was monotonous but by doing 3 days of that gave me 4.5 hours of time-off. I didn't use it until the end of the week.

I wrote Thank You cards to my supervisors and received a testimonial from the director of the lab to mark the end of my internship.

After the Internship

It was sad to say that I didn't get to do laboratory works or field works during the internship but I felt that I have gained knowledge and experience from the internship. The job that I have done was course-related but the fact was that I haven't learn Transportation Engineering yet. By knowing first-hand on what was it about, I started to get interested by it and hoping that I can do well and maybe pursue into that field.

The internship was an enjoyable experience but I have one thing that I didn't accomplished. Communication. I didn't talk to my supervisors and the other interns during the internship. It only applicable when I have completed my task or when someone asked me. I feel that I should have taken the initiative to speak to them before they speak to me. That is my weakness. It may take time to accomplish but it's better not to ignore it because communication is the key to know more about people and work cannot be accomplished when there is a lack of communication among your team members.

I would like to thank my supervisors for teaching me and giving me some knowledge about Transportation Engineering for the past 12 weeks. It was a pleasure in meeting those people during the intern period.

Once again, Thank You!