Yesterday was my last day working in Bloomington, IL with State Farm Insurance. I meant to post more about my experience in this blog. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. I will share what I believe are the a couple of the most important things I learned from my internship.

First, meet and interview as many full time employees as possible! My mentor gave me a list of 13 employees to talk about their experience with State Farm. I learned more about the company from these one-on-one conversations than I ever could have just sitting at my desk working on just assignments.

Second, take ownership of your work. If you have an idea to enhance your work share it with other people. I met interns at that do exactly what they’re told and that’s it. I’ve noticed that not all people care to share their ideas about how to make their work extraordinary. There were quite a few instances while working on assignments that I thought there may be a better way to approach a problem. My ideas weren’t part of the original design but when I talked them over with my mentor it gave him food for thought, and we eventually came up with better results the more we added ideas together.