Values represented by my internship team



I am working in a pod of three Explore interns and three mentors. My teammates are all rising junior students, and my mentors consist of two project managers and a software engineer. It was surprising that all my pod mates were part of the same internship as last summer. Thinking about the user pain points we are solving is easier since we practiced the entire product life cycle during last summer's internship.

My teammates are great communicators who enjoy talking through any ideas they have with the team to all participate in the decisions made. The effective communication among our team has made conversations around adopting healthy work hours for collaboration easy, even if we are all located in different time zones.

We conducted ten user interviews this week to understand the problem that our internship project will be solving. The interviewing process included scheduling interviews with different product managers through emails and Microsoft Teams and attending a feedback session with Excel customers. Our team's ability to communicate with technical and non-technical users enabled us to gather information about our users' pain points and the different ways they use Microsoft Excel. Communication is a value 

I share with my teammates. The different labor positions and responsibilities at Berea College have greatly improved my value for clear and complete communication. However, unlike my teammates, I always prefer written communication to spoken communication because I have enough time to think through the topics discussed to ask or answer thoughtfully. Working in a team that likes verbal communication through virtual meetings, I am learning how to communicate even in unwritten communication effectively

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