On a normal week, I would get onto site at IFF at 7:00. I do my best to plan out my day pulling from what I did not get done the previous day. If it is a Monday, I will look ahead to see what the week is going to look like and what I should plan for. I check my emails and go through my voicemail as well if there are any messages in there from Friday after work. From there I start to work on things that I must finish while I wait for my PM or superintendent to allocate more tasks to me. A lot of the stuff that I have been working on is design/pricing of smaller projects that IFF is asking us to do that are separate from the current project.
The most memorable project I have worked on this summer was Frito Lay in Fayetteville Tennessee. I really wanted to travel to make sure it was something I would be interested in in the future, so it was an amazing opportunity. I learned a lot from it since we were out in the field the entire day. We did a lot of ironwork over the two weeks I was there, and I gained a much better understanding of welding, sequencing, and steel erection in general. Rich Palmer was a great mentor on the project. Everyone there had a lot of experience and was open to answering questions as well.
I did my first small job pricing from the ground up this summer. While I would not say it was that uncomfortable for me, it was a challenge to design something and then figure out man hours and pricing for it. I took on the project by doing a quick review with my PM on what the client was thinking, and then being able to draw up the plans myself helped me a lot with pricing it out. After I had something that I thought was a pretty good grasp of the scope we needed, I reviewed it with my PM and we fine-tuned some of the man hours as well as pricing of equipment.
The experience that stood out to me the most in this internship was being able to tour the MCW Sports Science Center. I am a big basketball fan, and being able to see and NBA team’s training center was something that I do not think most fans/people get the chance to do, so it was something that I will remember for a long time. Another part of this summer that stands out is just getting to know the people with which you are working. Everyone is friendly and wants everyone else to get along and enjoy coming in to work. Even when it has not been the best day either on site or off, people are still asking each other how their day was, if they have any plans for the weekend, and making jokes to keep the atmosphere a little bit brighter. The culture here is reflected by everyone, especially on those harder days.
