EC-17.4 Internship, Field Observation and the Mini-Project

What this is and why it exists

Most internships produce a certificate and no evidence. Most site visits produce a photograph.

The difference between those and something useful is entirely in what was decided before starting: what you wanted from it, and what you would record.

This topic is that decision, made in advance. It applies equally to a paid placement, an unpaid observation and a project done alone at home.

The vocabulary

• Placement — any period spent working or observing in a real setting.
• Field observation — a structured visit treated as a measurement rather than a tour.
• Mini-project — a small piece of work with a demonstrable result.
• Log — a running record of what you did, learned and produced.
• Confidentiality — an obligation not to disclose what you were shown.
• Artefact — something you produced that can be shown to someone else.

The mental model

Decide what you want from a placement before it starts. There are three honest answers and any one of them is enough.

A skill you do not have. A piece of evidence you can show. Or an understanding of how a particular kind of work is actually done.

A placement entered without one of these produces a certificate and very little else, because nothing during it will be judged against anything. The decision takes ten minutes and it changes what you pay attention to for six weeks.

Observation is a method rather than attendance. Record what equipment is used, who decides what, where the delays occur and what people complain about.

That last one is the most informative and the least obvious. What people complain about is where the real problems are, and it is information nobody writes down. A site visit treated as a measurement produces findings; treated as a tour it produces a photograph of a machine.

Keep a log, weekly, of what you did, what you learned and what you produced.

Written at the time it takes ten minutes. It is also the only source for the account you will have to give later, in an application, an interview or a report. Memory of a placement compresses to two anecdotes within a year, and neither of them will be the useful part.

Confidentiality is an obligation that people discover after they have breached it. Much of what you see may be commercially confidential, and the obligation continues after you leave.

The correct move is to ask, near the start, what may be described publicly, and to record the answer. That is a normal and professional question, and asking it is better regarded than assuming either way.

A mini-project is the version of all this available to someone with no placement at all. Choose something finishable in the weeks available, with a demonstrable result.

A small thing finished is worth more as evidence than a large thing abandoned. It teaches more too, because finishing is where most of the difficulty lives. The sizing argument from the capstone topic applies here unchanged, at a smaller scale.

Finally, turning any of the three into evidence. A written account of what you built or found, with the artefacts attached.

What cannot be shown cannot be assessed. Reconstructing evidence after a placement ends is rarely possible, because you no longer have access to the equipment, the data or the people. Ten minutes a week during, or an afternoon of frustration afterwards, and the second option usually fails.

What you should now be able to explain or do

• Decide what you want from a placement before it starts, in one of three forms.
• Treat a site visit as an observation with recorded findings.
• Keep a weekly log that will support an account given a year later.
• Ask what may be described publicly, and record the answer.
• Size a mini-project so that it finishes, and say why finishing matters most.
• Produce evidence during the experience rather than reconstructing it afterwards.

Check yourself