Meet the Interns - GE Corporate

Virginia - Intern, GE CorporateMy favorite part about this summer has been the opportunities I have had to push myself outside of my comfort zone within my project, through the side IMLP projects, and in my free time. The main project that I am working on is with Desktop Virtualization, a topic that I have had no prior education in, and was intimidated by how many responsibilities I was given. Immediately, I was given ample resources to learn about the technology, and felt that I was learning at a good pace. Soon after, I was asked to represent my team at a 25 person workshop regarding an IT issue another division of the business was having. I was the only person attending who was not a full time employee, and while I was very excited, I was very scared that I would not adequately represent my team. By basically throwing me in the deep end, I was pushed to overcome my hesitancies, actively participate in the workshop, learn a lot, and meet a lot of great people who worked for GE in a variety of locations nationwide.

 

Another way that I have been able to push myself outside of my comfort zone has been through the IMLP Tech Team. I came into this internship knowing that coding was a weakness of mine that I wanted to improve. Soon into the internship I learned about the IMLP Tech Team and saw that this project would need a great deal of coding. I contacted the head of the team and was told right away that the whole point of the team was to be a learning exercise, and he not only told me that I would be fine coming in with the little coding knowledge that I have, but he encouraged it.

 

The last and definitely most exciting way that I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone this summer was a couple of weekend ago. It has been obvious to me that GE finds outside interaction between interns to be important, and because of this, there were a lot of social activities planned. One of these was skydiving. I have been scared of heights for a long time, and even avoid some bridges at school. But when this opportunity came up, I couldn't help but think that this could easily be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I should go for it. It was one of the most invigorating, exciting, and fun things I have ever done in my life.