Virtual internship, real learning – My journey with Internshala
About the Author: Pranav Jain is pursuing B.E. in Computer Engineering from Atharva College of Engineering. He recently completed his virtual internship with Internshala as a Teaching Assistant for the Web Development training and recounts his experience of working with the team.
I had always enjoyed interacting with people which prompted me to apply for this internship. The stipend was an incentive too as I was planning to earn some extra pocket money for the RX 480 graphics card. The selection procedure was challenging but I enjoyed it. After I applied for the internship and got shortlisted, my first task was to prepare a web application for students to purchase online training programs. There was a time limit of 2-3 days, but I submitted it within one day. This was followed by two telephonic interviews – the technical interview was taken by Aarti, and the HR interview was taken by Aastha. Both interviews were around 2 hours long and luckily, I passed both and was hired.
In the beginning, I was worried about time management and the workload; I wasn’t sure if I would be able to perform well during the internship. Fast forward to two weeks, and all my qualms seemed silly. The internship, in fact, helped me in managing my time efficiently. I realized the value of time and distributed my workload making sure that I made optimum use of my time.
My college management was also very supportive and helped me in my studies by arranging special doubt lectures and relaxing attendance rules for me. The work usually required 2-2.5 hours every day and it was quite manageable. Also, since it was a work from home internship, I was able to do some work from the college itself whenever I had free time.
My major responsibility was helping students who were doing a training from Internshala by clearing their doubts. I replied to their queries on the forum created for the web development training, and I also handled the live chat session. The live chat session took around 70 minutes daily and was the most challenging part as I had to answer the students’ queries in a limited time. The forum was comparatively easier to handle as I had ample amount of time.
To other students planning to do a virtual internship, I would just like to say:
a) Always pre-plan your schedule and then follow that schedule religiously.
b) Don’t forget to have your ‘me time’ every day otherwise you’ll start getting bored easily and won’t be able to perform in the best way you could. I, for example, went to the gym regularly and took part in competitive gaming since I enjoy doing both these things
This internship proved to be a humbling learning experience. From time management to handling pressure situations, I learnt a lot. Though my internship got over, the experience still helps me in my daily life as now I focus more on planning things before directly starting them. As a result, not only I’m completing my projects on time but also making time for my various hobbies!
