Maintaining a consistent schedule and communicating when you will be absent or if you are having an issue within the internship is vital for having a positive experience. It is difficult to have a great experience if you do not work consistent hours or work very few hours over the course of the year. Some interns have been frustrated about not being given exciting or meaningful tasks and this frequently happens if you do not work consistently or put in enough hours.

The Problem

Here’s where we commonly see this go wrong:

• You started an experiment and the experiment needs to be completed within a few days after beginning the process. Or you’re given a data entry task with a firm deadline.
• You don’t go to your internship (for whatever reason) and miss part of the experiment or don’t meet the task deadline. This might happen just once or a few times.
• Your supervisor is reluctant to give you meaningful tasks or anything that is time-sensitive because it may not get done. They give you smaller, boring tasks instead.
• You feel like you aren’t contributing much to the team and go to your internship less.
• You see even more of a loss of responsibility, tasks, and experience within the internship.

We recommend scheduling at least 4 hours per week for your internship. Even if your supervisor is flexible on scheduling, it’s helpful to set your own consistent work times to ensure you’re getting work done. Flexible schedules can lead to procrastination or other responsibilities taking priority. You need to put in the work to get all the benefits of the internship.

Possible Solutions

Have a positive experience by communicating! Let your internship team know of any changes at least a week ahead of time to allow them to plan properly and assign work based on your schedule. If you know weeks in advance, tell them. Work and meetings are often planned out weeks or months ahead and any warning can help.

Our suggestions:

• Add all of your exam and homework deadlines to a master calendar and see where the busy times are. Let your supervisor know those times to help them plan around you as they assign tasks and responsibilities. It helps to review the upcoming month or semester in advance. Supervisors are flexible but want to see that you’re planning ahead and exams are usually not a surprise.
• Keep a consistent internship schedule, even if it’s just four hours a week. If they know they can rely on you for certain times, they’ll give you more responsibility sooner. A consistent schedule helps in the beginning as you complete mandatory trainings. You won’t get to the fun work until that’s done, so don’t procrastinate!
• If an emergency comes up, communicate as soon as possible. There is an startup worksheet to figure out who to contact and the best way to do that.
• Talk to your supervisor if you’d like more responsibility and ask what you need to do to get there. If the reason is your scheduling, have an honest conversation about what you will do to make more time in your schedule.

Talk to us

Talk to us if you’re struggling with managing your time. Ambassadors have been in your shoes and have ideas. Reach out if you don’t feel you’re doing important or useful work and we can discuss ways for you to bring it up to your supervisor. The director will not contact your supervisor on your behalf, this is just coaching to help you solve the problem on your own. Here’s what we’ll discuss:

• • You need to be realistic about your own schedule and what might need to change to be allowed more responsibility. Sometimes this also means finishing a training or deal with other logistical issues before you can have access.
  • You may have to ask how your tasks are relevant or important to the work of your team. Supervisors don’t always offer the “why” every time they assign work. Often what seems like busywork is actually crucial to the work they’re doing and leads to bigger things. You’ll never know if you don’t ask!
  • You could ask your supervisor for different responsibilities if you’re bored or learned you don’t like what you’re doing. It’s not always possible to change tasks but if they have another project they might be able to give you something different for at least part of your time.