My Time at the Friday Institute

Working as an intern at the Friday Institute was honestly an enjoyable experience. There is a diverse group of people working on various projects. It is a great opportunity to learn about how to develop and conduct research. Since there are so many different ongoing projects, there is always something of interest that you could work on. What I enjoyed most about my internship was the different jobs that I was able to do. 

I decided to become an intern here because I am interested in conducting my own research in the future. I also wanted to develop more skills related to research development because I plan to attend graduate school. I was able to practice my communication skills, especially since there were always questions that I had on projects. The people that I have worked with at FI were always open to any questions that I had and never made me feel silly for asking them. 

One of the main projects that I was working on was the SparkNC project. SparkNC’s focus is to get more students interested in high tech jobs and develop a pathway for them to get into that career. I think it is a great cause, especially because technology is our future. One of my favorite tasks while working at the FI was coding and evaluating surveys. I was able to learn how to create codes for different responses and place the responses in categories. This made it much easier to evaluate the surveys afterwards. 

During this internship I was definitely able to develop my research skills. We had biweekly group meetings where we met with a guest speaker who would teach us more about developing and conducting research. The information that I received from these speakers has helped me so much in school as well. As a psychology and sociology major, I am always reading and conducting literature reviews for papers. Practicing these skills has helped me so much, especially when I began to write my research proposal. 

I had a great time being an intern at the Friday Institute. It is a great place to learn and develop new skills. Even if the field of research is not exactly in line with your major, you are guaranteed to learn skills that will help you in your future career.