I really enjoyed the first week of the internship and can already feel myself developing a lot of good habits because of it. It forces me to wake up at 9:00 am when I usually wake up at 3 pm which has made my days longer and more productive. Along with gaining organization skills such as utilizing Meister Tasks, google sheets, and actively experimenting with what works best for me, I can also feel myself grow as a person from being exposed to new knowledge through the workshops.
The two workshops that we did, “ The Importance of Soft skills & Hard skills” and “Diversity & Inclusions,” has influenced me in a way where I look at things in a different lens and become more aware of myself and the world around me. I like that we played Kahoot in the “ Hard skills & Soft skills” workshop because it was a fun competitive activity for the interns to bond with each other. One thing that I would like to add to that is that despite that the internet says soft skills are more crucial to cashiers than hard skills, I still believe that hard skills are more important in being a cashier. My argument is that you can not be a cashier if you do not know how to work the register or do math! But overall I learned what hard skills and soft skills I lack, want to achieve, and improve on. Just by being aware of that and having the time to think about it, it makes me motivated to work towards those goals.
The “Diversity and Identity” workshop was also a very valuable learning experience for me. I was able to connect with the other interns on a more personal level through listening to each other’s perspectives on what diversity and identity mean to each of us and also just by being respectful and listening to what each of our identities are and our experience with being identified that way. The workshop made me think hard about the first time I was aware of my race and my first memory of race which was never something I thought about so it was interesting to explore my thoughts on that. Learning about how Identity is also a social construct brought back a memory of when I was in Kindergarten and a classmate asked how come I was Chinese if I was in America. I remembered trying to explain even though I did not understand why he thought I couldn’t be both.
When Adrianna was giving us examples of what Identity being a social construct means she talked about how she worked with little kids for some time and how there were multiple occasions where a kid would come crying to her because a classmate would tell them that they can not play with a certain toy cause of their gender or use a pink color cause they were a boy. That last example stuck out to me because it made me remember the time when I, among with other girls, questioned and poked fun at this boy in our table for using a pink colored pencil and telling him that pink is for girls. Thinking about that time made me feel ashamed for doing that to him but it also makes you realize the importance of knowledge and education. Being ashamed of something that you did due to ignorance is not a good feeling but reflecting on those actions and to have it result in feeling shameful shows growth and character development, and that in itself is also very valuable to realize.
At first, when we started getting into the tasks and the meetings that we will have, I was scared that I was gonna fall behind or lose track of time but I have come to realize that I am actually a really punctual person and it gives me confidence in knowing that. Overall, just from this short time of the internship, I felt like the knowledge and experience I have gained has given me a lot of certainty in being a leader.
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