What should you do before your Summer Internship?
Tags: career, internship, experience
Published: 2019-11-24 15:36:28

Your college semester ends and your internship which you've secured months ago is about to start. You barely get time to go home, if at all.  

What should you do at this time? What should you know before interning at a Tech firm?  

If this is going to be the first time you are interning in a Tech firm in a city that you've never visited before then hey! you're just like me. I interned at Microsft Hyderabad in the Summer of 2019 and here's my $0.02 to you.  

So what should you do?  

#### Eat as much home food as you can :P
Trust me, this is very important. You will spend your entire internship eating in the company's cafeteria or restaurants one way or the other. Home food is something that you're going to miss. If you're in India like me then the food gets different in different parts of the country. So you would not only miss food from your home you might even miss food like your home!

#### Figure out your accommodation for the Internship.
In India, it's quite hard to find decent apartments and PGs to live in. This trouble gets greatly reduced if your company is providing you accommodation for the internship. Some companies provide accommodation for the first two weeks. So use that time to find yourself a place to live in. Otherwise, try and contact some people who you might know in the city and try to find apartments to rent. You can even try and find places to stay online. Ideally, your accommodation should be close to your place of work.

#### Learn Git
Whichever company that you intern in the knowledge of Git is very useful. If your intern project is something where you will have to deploy into the existing codebase then knowing Git might save you a day or two worth of work. 

#### Don't learn new technologies just for the Internship
This is something that many of us want to do but unless you know about your intern project from before (which rarely happens) it does not make sense to try and learn new technologies from before. Just because there's a very large chance that you might not work with what you've learned. For example, at Microsoft, my project was on Blockchain Technology. Projects of other interns were on Machine Learning, Kubernetes, Web Technologies, Integration, and even Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality. So unless you can learn about all of these(and more!) technologies it does not make sense to take this time out to learn one of these and work in something completely unrelated.

#### Have a fresh and learning attitude.
You'll be experiencing and dealing with a lot of new things. Unlike school and college the 'real world' works in a very different way. So go with a positive and learning attitude. Learn whatever tech stack they ask you to work with. Make new friends. Get to know your team. Learn how to play pool or table tennis. Explore the company, explore the city. Find that guy to talk to about sports from across the building. If you feel like doing something, it's probably a good idea to do it. Learn to learn :)

#### Spend as much time as you can with your family.
Your internship will take away most if not all of your Summer holidays. And this might even be the last summer vacation. So make sure that you spend a lot of time with your family and try to take a short trip with them somewhere :)

#### Don't think too much.
This mantra surprisingly works well in life :P. Don't think too much about getting a return offer from the company or worry about your performance during your internship. You've been chosen by them after passing their interviews. They believe that you'll do well and you should too. Just give your best and things usually work out :)

Well, that's all I gotta say. All the best for your internship and have a great one!