Asking for Help Can Be a Good Thing!

I only have two weeks left at my two internships! My summer availability is significantly less than a lot of students because I have to return to campus for resident adviser training. I didn’t think I would mind this, but now my limited time with both Southern Weddings and Carolina Union Marketing and Design is making me rue the day I leave! However, without realizing it, I made the most of the second half of my internship.

I was still feeling like an underperformer at the Carolina Union—possibly because I was working with more experienced people, possibly because I went through many edits for each project I was assigned—so I asked for a mid-internship evaluation to voice my concerns with my performance, to hear what I was doing right and wrong and to get some advice.

Here is what I came away with:

• Faster is not always better. You should always be aware of deadlines and work toward them. However, if you have time to work on a project, don’t think that turning it in earlier looks better on your part. Instead, it means that you weren’t thinking through every possibility and experimenting with new ideas. Having learned that, the last project I was assigned took a few weeks for me to turn in my ideas—and my very last idea that I produced was the one that was picked and the one I liked best.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help or opinions. Without asking for an evaluation, I would still feel like I wasn’t doing my best in an environment where I want to strive. Without asking for my coworkers’ opinions, I wouldn’t learn from their experience and I wouldn’t have as many ideas to work with.

• Open up communication lines. After talking through everything with my supervisors, they now know that I care about my performance and my client and I now know that they care about how I learn best and how I work best.

Even if you are feeling totally comfortable at your internship, it may be a good idea to ask for a mid-internship evaluation anyway. I know that without the open communication in the Southern Weddings office, I wouldn’t learn as much or grow as much. But at some places, open communication isn’t as easy. Offices are separated, people don’t interact as much and people don’t have time to stand over your shoulder and see how you’re doing. Just ask!

As everyone has been saying on the blog, take the initiative and make yourself worth the time.