What School Never Taught me About a Real Job
Published by Shelbi Tierney on Wed, Dec 16, 2015
Miguel Del Rosario
Aviation Maintenance Technology
During the past summer, I emerged myself into a life changing experience that now I’m able to carry on with the experience and put it into practice on my daily duties as a professional and throughout my personal life as. It was my internship as an Aircraft Broker in Orange County, CA. At first when I saw the internship opening, it was a huge surprise since the title on it was “Aircraft Sales and Marketing Representative”, a title you don’t see very often on the aviation community. I decided to apply for it. Fast-forward four weeks later and I was living in southern California. It was sunny, bright, and warm but my mind was full of expectations and my body full of energies towards this new endeavor. It seemed like I had a promising summer ahead of me, but as most adventures, it was a leap of faith that comes with lots of ups and downs. And eventually it was, rolling into a company as an intern is like being thrown on the back of the bus; you’re automatically called “the new guy”. It didn’t take long to make the first mistake, in fact it only took a day. I showed up 2 hours earlier than the opening time and was caught wandering around the facilities without proper permission.
As the weeks went by and I stumbled into a couple rocks and obstacles, I was finally getting a hang of my duties as an intern. The more results I delivered, the more I began to earn the higher ups’ respect and trust. The first two months flew by and I felt like I was already hardwired into the company workflow. I was being held liable and accountable for my own decisions. For every new project that came to the company, I was given responsibility to operate on my own and deliver under my own standards and skills. This is when I began to realize that in the real world you don't always have somebody to hold your hand in every single step of any process. This becomes a growing opportunity where the individual takes responsibility for their actions and acts accordingly.
During the internship I got the opportunity to do a little traveling all over the west coast to places like, San Diego, Las Vegas, Palo Alto, Salt Lake City while learning a new little something in every trip. Starting with the business development progress, where I came to realization of how innovative and how much room for creativity there really is on a business and how much one can learn from other people that have already succeeded on different fields we can learn from.
To sum it all up, I arrived there with nothing and certainly came out on top, with a dramatic expansion of my comfort zone and a wider view of the world I live and operate in. From now on, what’s left is to carry on with my studies, keep developing my future business strategies and most definitely end up again in California.