I was offered another telecommuting internship with State Farm this fall! That means I get to do all of my work in Iowa City, IA and send it to the corporate office via the Internet. This will be my fifth telecommuting internship. I’m very fortunate to have had so many telecommuting opportunities. Telecommuting has really been the perfect job in college. The largest perk of the job is that I get to flex my work schedule around my class schedule. The only time I’m obligated to work at any specific time is when I have a meeting with a mentor or a manager.

My innovationREADY team was selected to present our project on the official innovationREADY day! In the past every innovationREADY team was required to present their project on the same day at the end of the summer. Lately, innovationREADY presentation day has become a big deal. The audience consists of interns, full-time employees and executive leadership. It’s supposed to be a privilege to present on innovationREADY day. This year there are too many teams to present in a single day. To figure out which teams will present on the official innovationREADY day, each teams’ project leader had to give a mid-summer presentation on how their team will be ready for innovationREADY day. I gave my pitch about two weeks ago and my team was selected to present!

My mid-summer evaluation was on Friday and it went extremely well! Every intern’s performance is evaluated by their manager once in the middle of the summer and a second time at the end of the summer. These evaluations help an intern learn where they are excelling and what parts of their work ethic may need to change.

My manager started the evaluation by asking me what I would like to get out of the evaluation. Technically, the meetings are required so I had to sit through it whether I wanted to get something out of it or not. However, my manager’s question shed light on the fact that I’m at State Farm for a purpose and I should find meaning in all aspects of my work which includes mandatory evaluations. Subsequently, I asked for constructive criticism that will help me work on my skills that may not be up to par with State Farm standards. Thankfully, I’ve been working my butt off this summer and my manager recognized that, so this part of the evaluation was extremely easy to sit through. 🙂

After assessing my strengths and weaknesses my manager asked where I see myself with State Farm in the future. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Last summer I thought it was my destiny. This summer I’ve been wondering whether or not the grass is greener at other companies. I told my manager the truth, I have a lot of respect for State Farm and they are a great employer but I want to compare it to another company. I want to work somewhere else next summer.

I’m at the halfway mark and it feels just like midterm week at school. The only difference is that instead of a written examinations I had two presentations. I presented my innovationREADY team’s progress. Thankfully, my team has worked hard and our effort really showed off during my presentations. My audiences were impressed with what my team had to show for themselves. In a matter of three weeks we researched our problem, started to develop a software solution and our software is nearly done. As I previously mentioned I’m developing iPad software to make State Farm’s college recruiting more efficient. I’m very fortunate that the college recruiters I’ve been working with are really excited with what my team has developed so far. End user enthusiasm and their plan to use our product in the fall is great motivation!