The title of this is exactly what I asked my husband when I first thought of doing an internship. Going into the post-bacc program at OSU, I paced out my courses and planned to graduate in the summer of 2022. As someone in their mid-thirties, an internship never even crossed my mind.
Summer 2021 classes were ending and I kept thinking about how I only had a year left before I graduated. I felt more confident in my coding abilities but also felt I lacked experience. In group discussions, I kept seeing more and more of my classmates mention internships they had completed that summer, and that’s when it occurred to me, “Hey! Maybe I should do an internship!?” followed up with my next thought “But I’ll be 37 next summer, am I too old to be an intern?”. I asked my husband (my biggest cheerleader) and he exclaimed “Of course not! There are a lot of career changers that do internships!”. And it was decided I would postpone graduating until December of 2022 so I could complete a summer internship.
I interned at PNC as a technology intern on their Strategy and Innovation team. The first day of the internship was a Welcome event in Pittsburgh. All of the interns (400+) from across the country were there. I quickly realized that there were not a lot (if any) career changers and I was one of the oldest interns by 15+ years. I’d like to say that this didn’t bother me, but it was definitely a little awkward, especially when a few interns asked me with perplexed faces, “Are you an intern, or are you part of HR/management?”. I started to think that maybe this was a mistake and for the first time in my life, I actually did feel “old”.
We all have those voices of self-doubt that can’t be turned off or controlled from creeping into our heads, BUT we do have control over whether we let them turn what should be a good experience into a bad one. So I decided to make the choice of staying positive and focused on the big picture of gaining experience. Prior to the Welcome event, my future manager contacted me to let me know I would be working as a developer on the Strategy and Innovation team at PNC. I was excited as it was a small team that worked on many different projects within PNC. I decided to focus on keeping that excitement and not let something as insignificant as age get me down.
The following week I met the team and right away all my worries and self-doubt of “Was doing an internship the right choice?” washed away. The team consisted of five intelligent guys who all had very diverse career trajectories that led to them joining this team. I could see their passion for technology but what surprised me, even more, was everyone’s willingness to be a mentor and to share their knowledge. This was exactly what I hoped for when deciding to intern!
As I worked this past summer as an intern, I never felt like an “intern”, I was made to feel a part of the team and was thrown right into complex projects to put my coding skills to use. To say my internship exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. It not only gave me more confidence as a programmer, but it also ended with a job offer!
It’s true that our own worst enemy is ourselves, but we have the power to overcome our negative thoughts. If I would have let something as trivial as age stop me from being an intern, I would have forfeited an amazing experience. And as Robert DeNiro proved in the movie The Intern, “Experience never gets old!”
Image Source: IMDB https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361509/
