Summary – Get the most out of your internship

This time around a lot of my blogger friends (younger friends anyway) are doing their internship. Basically internship is a part of their requirement to get a college degree where they need to work at a company for a period of time and learn all there is to learn about working experience.

Today’s post will be dedicated for them. A collection of my own experience on what the hidden lessons in internship they need to acquire to get the most out of the program.

1) Learn real people skill
Working people are quite different from students. They often view other people competitively, or sometimes they are too self-centered that they just ignore you completely. Yet there are still people who is kind hearted. Colorful people.

You should learn what is the best way to introduce yourself to them. And more importantly how to get their coperation on your task at hand. Basically you need to

• Befriend one quick and get the inside story of everyone (of course casually)
• Identify who people listen to, who people hate, who people like etc.
• Your aim is to get your task done, and if you ask them for help (what ever group they are), they will more than happy to help. Find out how exactly to achieve this.

2) Learn how a boss become the boss
Once you had observed your colleague, you should start monitor your superior or your boss. Try to pinpoint what quality he has that makes him the boss. If for example, to be a boss you will need to have certain specialization certificate, jot that down. You now know what you need to get to sit on his chair someday.

• Study how he handle people
• Observe his working attitude, can you do that?

3) Secure your future career
The next thing you should question yourself is whether or not you would want to work in the company after you graduated. Well, you should because job hunting after you graduated can be a very tiring thing to do.

• Obviously you will need to perform well in that internship.
• Do some research on the company’s hiring process. It will be a good idea too to get to know the HR manager of the company and casually hinting to him about your intention of working there.
• Insist on a recommendation letter from your superior. This will help a lot in your job hunting later on.
• Take note on the details of other similar companies, such as contact person, type of industry. You may very well be working there.

4) Learn surviving work
One great thing about internship is that how ever you do, be it good or bad, you will stop working there after your internship is over. So do take up some experiment. Here’s a few ideas

• Identify what motivates you to come to work
• Try out the many ways to manage your stress
• Get involve in the office politics
• Make mistake, get yelled at by the boss and learn how to get up from that
• Experiment with management system of the company such as 5S, or Decluttering etc. See which works on you

5) Learn how to manage your money
Most of the time, intern are underpaid, so this is a great challenge. How to survive with that small amount of allowances.

As easy as it sounds, this may be one of the hardest thing to do. It’s almost come naturally that when we have money, we will spend more. This is the basis of all budgeting.

• Start by analyzing your expenditure everyday. Keep track of them and make a summary by the end of the month
• Categorize your expenditure to maybe food, entertainment, travel, phone, bill, etc.
• Now find a way to cut down 10% of expenditure in every categories.
• You are now saving 10% of your salary. Keep increasing the percentage.
• Other tips on managing your finance

/end

Internship can be heaven or hell. However, since we must undergo it, why not take full advantage of it. You know people will take advantage of you.

– I wonder –
Any interesting stories from your internship?

———— Personal Note ————-
I actually did my internship at a petrochemical company. Unlike most universities, I worked there for 7 months. Hate waking up early then to catch the bus. Love the continuous supply of hot milo 🙂 Can’t forget the time I hitchiked a car to go to work, Good times good times

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It’s Sunday. And as always it’s light reading today. Enjoy your weekend!

A charity organization discovered that within their city live a very rich person who has not donated even a single cent to charity. The person in charge of contributions called him to persuade him to contribute.

“Our research shows that out of a yearly income of at least $500,000, you have never given out a penny to charity. Wouldn’t you like to give back to the community in some way?”

The man mulled this over for a moment and replied, “First, did your research also show that my mother is dying after a long illness, and has medical bills that are several times her annual income?”

Embarrassed, the charity organization rep mumbled, “Um … no.”

The man interrupts, “or that my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair?”

The stricken rep began to stammer out an apology, but was interrupted again.

“or that my sister’s husband died in a traffic accident,” the man’s voice rising in indignation, “leaving her penniless with three children?!”

The now humiliated rep, completely beaten, said simply, “I had no idea…”

On a roll, the man cut him off once again, “So if I don’t give any money to them, why should I give any to you?”

/end

Lesson learnt

• Don’t abandon your family just to avoid donating money. That’s just wrong 🙂
• If family do not help family, who will?
• It is almost sinful to justify your wrongdoings simply because you had done worse

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Summary – Do you want to sit or put out that fire?

I’m sure everyone knows that on April 22nd we celebrated Earth Day. Not a joyous function if I may add. Why should we when we are killing our home. Funny.. how we set our house on fire and we keep sitting around planning how to spend our money.

No worry. This is not a normal Earth Day post. That is why I post it way after April 22nd. If you want to know what you can do to help out, I’m sure there are a lot of environmental blogs out there with great list.

• Earth Day – Wikipedia
• Earth Day – Official Webpage
• How To Save the Environment

Just watch the movie “Inconvenient Truth” currently aired on HBO. Whether you believe it or not, that’s totally up to you. But I truly find the images and facts elaborated in that documentary very shocking. And if that doesn’t give you the idea of how terrible our condition is now, I don’t know what will.

That said, today I’m actually going to write why the whole idea of environmental will most probably fail. Why after all the campaign made to increase our awareness, it can still be pointless. Rest assured, if it fails, we will die. As simple as that.

It will fail because everyone just doesn’t want to care.

“Someone else should be responsible. The government should make a drastic move for the environment. Not us. How can one man/woman make a change. Even if we use less electricity, it will not help in the overall state of environment. It will only make ourself more uncomfortable. So why bother?”

This idea is very wrong. The fact is, if the occupant of a house in fire didn’t care about putting out the fire, don’t you think they deserve to be burnt alive in there?

We need to care, guys. We need to know that what we did will have effect whether positively or negatively to our home. If we don’t know what’s happening, google them out. It’s our responsibility to know. Check what we can do to help. Information is just at the click of a button.

Forget about influencing others. How can you do that if you are still not convinced yourself. Influencing others should be our next goal in the next Earth Day.

– I wonder –
Anybody else watched the movie?

——— Personal Note ———
It’s simple really. If you know that what you are doing is damaging our world, why keep doing it? And if you know that what you are doing is prolonging our world’s health, then what possible reason we should stop doing it?

Please watch the movie – Inconvenient Truth

Photo Credit – Kiwi NZ

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Summary – Clean as you go

I have a confession. House chores are very boring. All those dishes to wash, corner of the house to clean. I don’t hate them. It’s just sometimes when the dishes piled up, it is very demotivating to just look at it. This attitude does not help either since it will keep piling up until at one point, I will have no other choice but immediately do it. By that time, I will often do it with a not-happy look in my face.

I was introduced to a new concept of cleaning, which is “Clean As You Go”. Basically it says as soon as you created a mess immediately clear it up. Let me elaborate through some examples

When you are done with dinner, immediately wash all the dishes. This will only takes 2 minutes tops since the amount of dishes is just a few. As a result, whenever you go into the kitchen, there will be no dishes piling up. Thus a smile on your face. (I know there’s one on mine)

You see some clutter on your desk, like crumpled paper, unused envelopes etc. Don’t hesitate. throw them away into the rubbish bin immediately. Take 30 seconds from your time to do exactly that. You will then have a more organized desk for your work

When you’re casually driving just after the rain and out of nowhere there’s a dirt flying and hit your windscreen. You can leave it there if you want and drive away. But it will be easier if you stop the car and wash it away immediately. If you wait, that dirt may dried up and makes it harder to clean.

The idea is simple. Whatever you do, be it working, watching television, dinner etc, allocate a few seconds for quick cleaning. Just a few seconds will do and you will see a great change in your house cleanliness.

Another important point you must remember is not to overdo the cleaning. If not you will end up doing a spring cleaning project all the way and you cannot finish your other works, or watching that television. Remember, all you need is a few seconds.

There’s a saying in Malaysia – Sedikit-sedikit lama-lama jadi bukit. Directly translated – A few dirt daily, soon it will be a mountain.

– I wonder –
Do you have cleanliness problem in your house?

——— Personal Note ———
I am actually practising this now. It all started when I have to do house cleaning project everytime I’m off from work. To tell you the truth, I’d rather be resting on my day off.

Tried the idea, and it works.. 🙂

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