My First Month in a Semester Long Internship!
Starting a semester long co-op in a new city:
So last month I packed everything I owned into my Jeep Cherokee and moved to San Antonio for the next 5 months. This wasn’t just on a whim or anything, I was doing a Mechanical Engineering Co-op at an aerospace company. This meant that I would spend an entire semester working and push my graduation date by an extra semester. Pushing my graduation time was no big deal to me since I would gain lots of valuable experience. And it also meant I could spend an extra Aggie football season and an extra semester being 21 in college. However, I was moving away from all my friends and organizations that have been part of my identity for the past few years to go to a completely new city that I’ve only visited a handful of times. Despite it being quite scary, I believed it would offer me a unique opportunity to explore myself a bit more in college.
My first day/week:
I was told to come in at 8 on the first day. I woke up at 6:30 am since I wasn’t going to be late for my first day of work ever. My visa status had prevented me from holding jobs until recently. So I had never worked any of the part-time jobs that pretty much all of my friends had worked some point in their lives. I spent the majority of the first week learning the basic structure of how things work in the company and doing some basic low stakes tasks. Even though I was not in school anymore, I felt like I was learning a whole bunch, mainly about how the industry works rather than the specific engineering concepts we were taught in class.
I’ve had to wake up early af:
Something I noticed instantly was how the engineers showed up early to work and were quite productive because of it. My hours were set from 7 am to 3:30 pm with a 30 min lunch in between. This meant that I would have to wake up at 6 am every single day to make it on time for work, which was earlier than I had ever woken up for a consistent period of time. This added instant fuel to my fear that I would accidentally sleep in on a workday. Except if I slept in, as I typically would in college till 10:00 am or so, half of my working day would already be over. Even though it still persists as a fear of mine, I haven’t had any major issues thus far. The most admirable part of this was that even though I felt like I was waking up at an ungodly hour, several of the engineers got there even earlier than me and worked well past the time I left.
My girlfriend told me that someone told her that “every hour before 9 am is worth two hours”, meaning that you’re wayyy more productive in the morning. I’ve found this to be incredibly true! At work, the first two hours feel like they’re moving quite slow mainly because of the fact I’m getting so much done fairly quickly. Waking up early af is something I want to take with me when I go back to college. I don’t know how realistic that ambition is, however, since a lot of my schedule usually depends on other people due to group projects, org meetings, etc. But it could also give me a bit of time all by myself to get some stuff done and have more free time towards the night.
I’ve been working out & eating (fairly) well:
Forcibly having to wake up early for work also motivated me to have a set routine for each day over the course of this month. My work ends at 3:30 pm and I attend a CrossFit class which starts at exactly 4:00 pm. Rushing to get there and get changed in 30 min also means that by the time I realize I don’t feel like working out I’m already there fully ready. This is my first time doing CrossFit and I’ve been loving the focus on functional movements. It’s been reminding me very much of soccer practices in high-school, where the training was extremely functional rather than using certain machines to make particular muscles bigger. I’ve noticed that when it comes to working out I thrive the most when it’s done in a social setting and when the goal is to be faster, stronger, jump higher, etc. rather than to look a certain way.
I’ve also been eating quite well recently mainly because I have more time to cook my meals for the week. I’ve noticed that cooking enough for about 4 total meals lets me eat stuff without getting sick of it and it also gives me lots of spare room to try out a couple of new restaurants for the other few meals. Now I honestly have no idea how I would be able to keep doing this in college since I don’t have much time and it’s quite difficult to pack food for the day and reheat it while on campus. A problem for the much wiser future Reuben to solve.
I have way more time on the weekends than I’m used to:
For the first time in a couple of years, I actually have the weekends to myself. No homework, no particular obligations, just two whole days to myself. Since I’m not used to having this time it presented quite a dilemma since I actually had to make an effort to figure out things to do in this time. So far I’ve gone to Dallas twice and spent the other two weekends exploring some local coffee shops and hiking. My goal by the end of this internship is to pretty much know San Antonio inside out by actively exploring as much as I physically can.
I’m surprised I don’t miss college more:
Before I started my co-op, I had an amazing Fall semester. I had just got back from an incredible Fish Camp experience. We were fully back in person. Football games and tailgates were in full swing, and I was in a leadership position for the first time in an org. Being as extroverted as I am, I was quite worried that not having a jam packed schedule or not constantly hanging out with my friends would make my quite lonely in the months to come. As of now I’m quite surprised that I’ve been having as much of a good time as I am. I believe having significantly more free time enabled me to take care of myself more and gave me breathing room to focus on other goals rather than being suffocated by all the obligations of a college student. I miss my friends a shit ton but I don’t miss how easy it was for me to spread myself quite thin. I still believe in the value of exploring several of interests while you’re young and have the opportunity but through this co-op, I’m slowly realizing the benefits of blocking some time just for yourself and not having a jam packed calendar.
