Reflections

Summer Internship for Great Basin 2018

In the beginning, I assumed that this internship would be fun and educational. After a few days, I learned that I would have to find my own tasks to do throughout the day. I suppose that doing this is showing initiative and leadership, but I thought it would be more a job type setting. I did learn that every person involved in a business, down to the janitor plays an essential role in making everything run smoothly. While I was working, I cleaned, organized, filed, designed, ran errands, handled prints, helped with soil samples, and several other things. Although I feel like I could have done more with my summer, the more I look back on it I realize that I learned a lot of life lessons. One of which is that a family members word is not golden, everything should be in writing, no matter who the agreement is with. All in all, I cannot take back that time, so I am choosing to only focus on the positive aspects, and how they will help shape my future.

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From this project I learned that leadership is about more then giving orders. Leadership is about learning to take suggestions and being capable of leading by example. During this project I encountered many issues that I had to solve either my way, my father's, or the clients way. Although I did not like that I was required to do it in a different way, even if it was a more difficult solution, it helped me to understand the way they think for future reference. For example, I started to complete tasks in several ways, so that I would not have to go back and do it a different way. In the end, doing it three ways in the beginning saved me time in the end. 

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Also, has become apparent that you cannot call yourself a leader, someone has to think of you as a leader, and be willing to follow. Personally, I had to take the initiative to give myself tasks that I saw the company needed, because even though I was working with my father, I did not view him as my leader. I noticed little things that hurt his credibility, like being extremely late to meetings. My mother always taught me to be thirty minutes early to be on time, on time was late, and being literally late defeated the purpose of even going. All in all, I learned many skills whether I learned them directly, or if I saw a change I wished to make in the leadership of those around me.