Doing Great Work at an Internship

Everyone wants to impress his or her boss by doing outstanding work at an internship. But how do you know when the opportunity is there? I work as a Web Design Intern at a company called ASTM International. My main task at my internship is to reorganize and redesign the company’s intranet site, currently over 400 pages in a confusing and cluttered navigation. On my first day, my boss gave me a useful book to read, Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug. This book has great advice and information about web interaction and usability. He lent it to me just as an interesting and informative read for when I had down time. But I took this book home and read it in a couple of days because I thought it could help me with my project. The book was a great refresher for things learned in school, as well as sparking some new ideas. So when I sat down to reorganize the information architecture, I was inspired by the book and managed to create a couple different drafts. My boss was pleased to see that I had made progress on this difficult project so soon and even had me start on wireframes. This is an example of an opportunity to learn more than expected of you and provide higher quality work. Whatever resources your employer gives you, take advantage of them. Even if you are not handed a book, do your own research and find your own resources to learn from. After all, it is important to be self-starting, efficient, and hungry to learn during an internship.

If you or anyone you know is going into the web/interactive fields, I strongly recommend picking up this book or any other Steve Krug book. His books are straight to the point, easy to read, and are sure to help you at a job or internship.