Time has flown by. I’m already halfway through my internship. In five more weeks, I will be going back to Miami and having a few days of vacation before I return to school in mid-September.

The clock always seems to rush when you have a packed schedule. My days at the office get quicker and quicker as I acquire many new responsibilities and have to multitask in order to meet all deadlines. Lately, I have been engaged in different projects at the same time. I have continued doing research on after-school recreation opportunities for medically fragile children. This involves conducting interviews with the staff at the office, which has enabled me to meet many new faces. Although I was formally introduced to all the staff members on my first day of work, it has been difficult to hold conversations with each since there are more than 100 employees at New Alternatives for Children. The other project I’ve been assigned to is the coordination of a new recreation program for children with a risk of obesity. I’ve had fun preparing activities that would increase the group’s awareness of nutrition and fitness and at the same time make the instruction entertaining. I also just finished typing a report about the organization’s unmet legal needs to request pro bono assistance from JPMorgan Chase attorneys, a leading law firm in the country. It was a great experience accompanying my supervisor to their offices on Wall Street and meeting with them. I was expecting an intimidating room full of men in suits with serious looks. So I was no less than surprised to find an all-woman group of attorneys waiting for us in a beautiful conference room whose windows displayed a view of a thousand skyscrapers.

This is my first authentic professional experience. In the past, I’ve had to deal with very different work environments, which were not really a huge departure from the regular activities I had to complete in school. During my junior year in high school, for example, I interned at a local hospital for a few months. That was the time when I was convinced I would be a doctor. Although it was a very prestigious hospital, my assignments weren’t particularly challenging. I was always running errands, transporting laboratory equipment. I’d had similar duties as a student volunteer for many of the high school clubs in which I was involved. When I joined the ACT staff as a student writer, there was much more complexity. As well as submitting quality writing, I had to meet specific deadlines and have the self-motivation and discipline to organize my own schedule. Nonetheless, the flexibility of being a virtual writer and not dealing with other ACT employees on a day-to-day basis made the work a bit unrealistic; now I know that public relations is a key component of the job environment. The same applies to the several translation jobs I have completed for the Harvard Student Agencies, when my responsibilities did not go beyond receiving documents via e-mail, translating them from English into Spanish, or vice versa, and sending them back the same way.

I’ve realized that my internship requires specific skills. First, since its focus group is children with disabilities, familiarity with this population is a plus. When I was applying for the intern position, I made sure to include in my application the different experiences I’d had with disabled children, such as volunteering for a therapeutic horseback-riding center on Saturdays. I realized that modifying my resume to target the subtleties of the job is extremely important. Another very helpful skill for this internship is knowledge of basic technology—everything from a thorough understanding of Microsoft Office to fast typing. Speaking both English and Spanish has been helpful as well. My bilingualism allows me to reach out to our Spanish-speaking clients and perform direct service. Inside the office, dealing exclusively with paperwork, you run the risk of desensitizing from the true goals of the job. Because of my many experiences in student organizations, where I’ve worked my way up from member into board positions, I’ve learned that more effective leadership emerges from understanding the building blocks of the group, from doing hands-on work. Realizing this has allowed me to remain focused both in college and now during my internship. But perhaps the most important skills to have as a beginner in any professional field are diligence, independence and a willingness to learn. Looking back, I can recall precise events that helped me acquire these. Taking the most rigorous courses, for example, taught me to work fast without sacrificing quality, since I had to complete loads of homework in a very short amount of time and still secure the best grades. Enrolling in Internet courses and working for ACT taught me self-discipline and independence, since I didn’t have a teacher or direct supervisor present to orient me at all times or check continuously on my schedule and rate of assignment completion. But I was responsible for completing the work. I guess that the willingness to learn is a personal trait, and intensifies when you’re satisfied with what you’re doing. Because I’ve picked the courses that truly interested me and because I’ve loved every job I’ve had, the willingness to set higher standards every time and learn from every mistake hasn’t been a difficult task for me.

Working a summer internship is an important decision to make. It constitutes a big time commitment and doesn’t allow lots of spare time to rest from the rough college days. That’s why many of my classmates aren’t working this summer and instead are traveling around the world, for example. But I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to become an intern. After only a month, I can already appreciate all the knowledge I’ve gained, both professionally and socially. I don’t doubt that I will pursue this same activity next summer and thus continue exploring my career interests and developing a stronger work ethic.