🎧 Episode 5: How I Decided To Do 12 Different Internships in College
Today I’m publishing Episode 5 of my podcast How I Decided — How I Decided To Do 12 Different Internships in College.
My guest is Charles Hu, who actually listened to one of my earlier episodes of the podcast and reached out expressing interest in doing one together. In the past I’ve had guests share one specific decision they made and I was planning on doing the same with Charles. But we started talking about our backgrounds and Charles was telling me about all the different kinds of internships and jobs he’d done before — startup intern, software engineering, data analyst, piano player, school teacher, marketing director, and I realized there was something more interesting here. Rather than focus on one decision, I wanted to have a conversation with Charles about his many different smaller decisions to try all sorts of internships and jobs
I thought this episode could be a great opportunity to dive into what one should do if they have many different interests early on in their career.
In our conversation we discuss:
- Charles’ once in a lifetime experience performing piano while studying abroad in Italy
- Recalibrating yourself to say “why not” to more opportunities
- Charles’ thoughts on having a diverse set of experiences vs specializing in something early on
- How to manage your time when you have many different interests
- The benefits of having diverse experiences and transferable skills
Takeaways
- After making your very first decision outside of your comfort zone, like Charles you can recognize that it’s not as scary as you might’ve initially thought, and you can change your mindset to seeking out uncomfortable or novel things in pursuit of learning and bettering yourself
- Decisions like doing a part time internship during college are relatively low-stakes since they only last at most a few months. Low-stakes decisions like these can be made faster because at worst it’s only for a few months, and at best it could be an exciting and eye-opening experience. Asking yourself “why not” can be a great tool to encourage yourself to make these low-stakes decisions without expending unnecessary energy deliberating over the decision.
- Life can be a lot more fun when we give ourselves permission to try out new types of work or experiences, even if they may not align exactly with our career goals
- Diverse internship/job experiences allow you to develop skills that are transferable to other fields or other roles in ways that you might not have expected
Referenced
Where to find Charles
Where to find Alex
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-yang15/
- Podcast Blog: https://alexyyang15.medium.com/
Thank you so much for reading. If you’re interested in decision-making like I am, would love to connect and share notes! Think there’s anything I should’ve followed up on in my convo with Charles? Reach out and let me know!
