How my Berea experience prepared me for my internship

One of the greatest lessons I learned from Berea College's labor program is not to be afraid to ask questions. For example, asking questions and receiving answers from my internship supervisors has been crucial in understanding my manager's requirements of the Microsoft Excel feature that my team will be building.
Firstly, my experience as a Teaching Assistant with the Computer Science department taught me that asking questions does not mean I am dumb, as I initially thought. As a teaching Assistant, I always enjoy helping students ask questions because I regard asking questions as a sign of curiosity. Overcoming that fear of being considered dumb has helped me ask thoughtful questions to my managers and mentors. Through asking those questions, I have been able to clarify what they meant by specific Microsoft jargon or acronyms and my project requirements.
Furthermore, working in teams during class projects, course team works, and as a Teaching Assistants at Berea College taught me how to navigate team dynamics and considering my team as my first support group rather than a competition between individual team members. As we were setting up our development environment and going through courses to prepare for the development phase of our product, I felt comfortable asking and answering my teammates' questions. Through this team support, we usually found ourselves able to troubleshoot some bugs we faced without asking our mentors. This was a great way to build our team connection in preparation for the next ten weeks of working together.

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