A - Academic Internship
I earned my Academic Internship Credit through my 2024 Summer Internet of Things Internship at Hartford Steam Boiler.
Importance
I feel that we don't stress enough in the educational system just how different in-school learning is from on-the-job learning. While college gave me the core skills I needed to secure an internship, there was so much I learned from my internship that I had not even realized I needed to know. As the goal of the LEADERS program is to prepare us for our careers after college, I feel that there is no experience as crucial to the program as the academic internship. While it is not an opportunity everyone is afforded, I also had a hybrid position, and because of this, I was able to see the differences between in-office and remote work and formed my own opinions on which I preferred, which is great to know moving forward. I was able to get my footing in the professional world and learn a lot of details on office culture that would be difficult to teach in a traditional classroom setting. More than that, every industry has a different work culture, and it's important to experience it and actually perform the job we study for as we could find out we like one aspect of the field more than another and still have time to learn and train for that before accepting a more permanent position.
Context
I spent the summer of 2024 working at Hartford Steam Boiler in a hybrid work position. I had been working hard to secure an internship, but seemed to consistently make it far in the interview process only to lose the chance to someone with more experience. This taught me a few things. For one, I realized how difficult the job market is for young professionals, something that was nice to experience after not having trouble finding work in high school. Two, this experience showed me that there would always be someone more qualified than me if I couldn't find an intro to the tech field. While I was technically a rising junior, I knew I would be graduating in the spring of 2025 and was determined to find any internship, but I ultimately lucked out in finding HSB's IoT Intern position. Hartford Steam Boiler is an engineering and technical risk insurance company offering insurance and services in areas such as cybersecurity. My internship was focused on the IoT department, where I helped monitor HSB's leak and freeze sensors. While I performed various tasks in my internship, I learned the most from my meetings with different cyber departments, such as cybersecurity, cyber products, cyber insurers, and more.
Development
Naturally being my first internship in the tech field, this internship was a major milestone in my development as a cybersecurity professional. Not only did it give me critical skills that will be highly beneficial moving forward in my career, but it helped me make some of my most impactful connections to date, thanks to this internship I had the opportunity to meet and learn from all different types of roles across different aspects of cybersecurity in the company. These connections even directly contributed to the furthering of my career as they helped me to secure a cybersecurity internship for the same company for this upcoming summer! I eagerly look forward to learning as much as I can this summer and am excited to see where this internship takes me!