Even before I joined the MBA program, all I could think about was what kind of internship I wanted. Somehow, that seemed to me even more crucial that I land the perfect internship – one that would allow me to apply all my new found MBA learning and set me on the path to glittering success!
The things to consider were – did I want a Rochester based one (to multi-task and take classes over the summer in parallel), did I want one outside Rochester (or how else would I see more of the US, being an international student), or did I want an internship in my home country(combine a home trip with it). Did I want to work with in a small start-up environment where maximum learning occurs or did I want a more structured large company’s formalized program? And, the most important of all – WHAT kind of consulting did I actually want to do??? (Btw… did I mention that I am a would-be consultant?)
After a lot of soul searching, endless discussion with just about everyone and of course, the opportunities available (remember the sub-prime crisis was hot news and I started in January, which is not the perfect time for internship search), I decided that I wanted an entrepreneurial environment and work with a local firm in some industry I had not worked with before. Seeing that I had been a telecom consultant pretty much all of my pre-MBA life (in which I had been working, of course!), the choice of industry was endless – I could spend days thinking about it.
An internship with High Tech Rochester just about filled each and every item on my wish list for a dream internship. My wish has come true…. I thought flying above the highest clouds… and how! I worked as a consultant devising market assessment and business viability strategies for a start-up in the funeral industry! Strange as it may sound, I loved each and every moment of it. Devising strategies for something you have no clue about forces a kind of learning that is hard to find elsewhere. I got to use some fact from each and every class I had taken during my first year. I was constantly challenged by working with very senior people, who had being doing this work for a long time. Challenging their views and standing ground before them taught me the importance of research and preparation. No amount is ever enough. It is always a trade-off against time.
It was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything else.
