I had the opportunity to intern as a software developer for a derivatives trading company in Chicago from July – December 2021. This blog post will cover some advice and things that I learned that helped me make the most of my internship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an intern you will likely face challenges and run into problems. Early on in my internship, I did not want to inconvenience other team members by asking too many questions so I spent a lot of time trying to solve problems on my own. While this is valuable experience, I was missing out on the experience, training, and mentorship that my team could offer. As an intern I found that setting time limits on solving problems allowed me to strike a balance between learning how to figure things out on my own, and getting the most out of my internship. I would set a timer for 30 minutes, an hour, or several hours depending on how complex the problem was and at the end of that time if I had not found a solution, I would ask for help. This allowed my team to see my thought process and what I had tried so far, and prevented me from spending all day on a problem that they were able to quickly help me with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I scheduled a weekly meeting with my mentor to go over my progress, talk about future plans, and ask questions. These meetings helped keep me on track and were a good way for me to batch my questions together. If I had an urgent question I could easily ask my mentor in person on on Teams, but I found that keeping a running list of non-urgent questions to ask during my weekly meetings was an efficient way to get them answered and minimize interruptions. The frequent meetings also gave my mentor a chance to provide course corrections before I strayed too far off. I would outline my plans for how I would solve a particular problem, or what I was going to work on next week and he would provide feedback and help prioritize my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sat in on the training program that the company had for trading interns and new hires. Although I was not planning on becoming a derivatives trader, if I stayed on at the company I would be writing software to support the traders, and a basic understanding of trading would come in handy. It was also a good way to meet other people in the company and get a better understanding of the company as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My focus during working hours was to improve my skills as a software developer and hopefully get a job offer at the end of my internship. The internship was also an opportunity to meet new people and explore a new city. Make sure you enjoy your time off work and find things you like to do to recharge. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had the opportunity to intern as a software developer for a derivatives trading company in Chicago from July – December 2021. This blog post will cover some advice and things that I learned that helped me make the most of my internship. Set limits on problem solving As an intern you will likely face… Continue reading Internship Lessons Learned<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11930,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11930"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/rudb2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}