For the past two months or so, I had been freaking out about my possible internship with Daimler Chrysler. I wasn't sure if it was something I actually would be happy doing, since I had never been interested in anything int he corporate world before. Well, I ended up taking the internship, but not without my freaking out both myself and my advisor along the way. But now I see there wasn't all that much to freak out about. My internship started this week and so far, its been great. Granted, I haven't been given enough stuff to do yet that would give me any sort of opinion on how things are going to be.
So...I started my internship at the Death Star on Wednesday. Getting up was interesting, I definitely can't remember the last time I got up that early. 6:30 in the morning to make sure I was up and out of the shower by the time my mom got up. The fact that the wonderful snow storm was getting under way around the same time too didn't help ease the blow of the early morning. Getting to work wasn't too bad...I just hopped on the expressway and rode that the entire way. It took me about 40 minutes, twice as long as it usually does, but not bad compared to the hour, hour and a half travel time some people were complaining about when they finally got to the office.
I ended up getting to the building incredibly early, but I'm glad I did because I had a bit of a problem hehe When I came in for my interview, I wrote down all of the directions (how to get to the building I needed to be in, how to get to the office, how to check in, etc.) Unfortunately, I couldn't find the folder I put it in. I wish I would have spent more time looking for it because I definitely needed it. Wednesday morning I could have sworn my office was on the fifth floor of the tower. That didn't look right. I took a look at the signs outside the offices, it was the wrong floor. Went up to the sixth...still the wrong floor. Down to the fourth. Nope. Rode the elevator up to the seventh; wrong. I started getting frustrated by that point and got tired of waiting for the elevators so I started taking the stairs to the different floors. I got to the eighth and just as I was looking at the signs, a woman was walking into the office. She asked me if I needed any help so I asked her if she knew where the department was that I was supposed to be working in. She didn't know so she let me into her section of the office and took me to one of the admins who looked it up for me.
Tenth. Floor.
I think I was a little off with the floors, don't you think? Where I got fifth floor, I have no idea.
By the time I got to the correct office, it was 8:30. I was so worried I was going to be late on my first day, but it turned out that because of the weather, most people didn't even get there until 9 or so. No one that could help me was there, I had to sit by myself in a conference room for almost half an hour waiting for someone...either the head admin or my supervisor or the other intern. The other intern, Nick, showed up first and showed me around the department. Can you say cluttered? wow. Paper everywhere. Even though every cubicle has its own filing cabinet, a few of the employees have taken over entire empty cubicles to dump all their stuff. Crazy.
Besides that little scare in the morning, nothing too exciting happened. I got the tour of the department. I have my own cubicle with a huge desk, a computer, and a phone. Yay. Hardly anyone showed up because of the weather (apparently everyone has a ridiculously long drive to get to work...) so Nick and I just sort of sat around and talked for a majority of the day. His last day was Friday so he didn't have any projects to work on. He just explained a few of the projects they might have me work on and then we sat there and talked and complained about random things for a few hours, then we went to lunch, then we sat and talked some more. While I love sitting there doing nothing, I can only handle that for so long. I hope they find stuff for me to do...I spent a majority of the day fidgeting, talking to Nick, obsessively checking my company email (yes, I do have a chrysler email address!!!) and checked the Oakland website (every freaking 20 minutes or so) to see if my class was cancelled. It was!!! Yay!
Because there was nothing to do and my evening class had been cancelled, they let Nick and I go home an hour early to try and get out and home before the roads were too bad. Well, the roads were already horrible. It took me two hours to get home. I almost fell asleep behind the wheel I was so tired and creeping along at such a slow pace for such a long period of time really wore me out. I finally had to start calling people to talk to to stay awake. It was pretty bad. My drive home took so long, my aunt called me at least four times, wanting to know where I was and why I wasn't home yet. I was to call her as soon as I got home, but apparently I should have been home much earlier than that. It was kind of funny....
And yeah...that was exciting day one of my internship. Stay tuned for....DAY TWO!!!