Intern Away Day
A day away from the West Kensington office led to building bridges, a lot of spaghetti and marshmallows and darts stars being born. Intern away day.
‘I’m only an intern — I don’t have a career to ruin just yet.’
I’ve ended my first week at my internship in terrific storm by proving that I can throw a dart.
Next week will be the time to show if I can work the system I’ve been trained to run and hired to operate.
Myself and Sian (the other starter) were rather fortuitous to only have a four-day week.
The delayed location planning team away day fell in our first week at the company.
Situated in a restaurant on nearby Goodge Street, where we later had lunch, the team of twenty-something people congregated and shared laughs as well as tears.
The day was full of activities.
Some presentations and case studies from more senior members of the team, which gave me some context about the company and its competitors.
There were team games.
One of which was a variation on the balloon building game I played at Gen-UN.
This time we had to make a beautiful structure and a tall structure from only spaghetti and tiny marshmallows.
We could break the spaghetti to make shapes, but often the spaghetti won the battle.
There was some cheating but it was a difficult task.
It’s often about why you validated your cheating that will award you second place, like our team received.
I think the most interesting part of the day was where I found a distinctive mismatch between myself and the team.
We discussed the parameters for being ahead of the competition in our analyses. My knowledge of quantitative and its capabilities is limited so I stuck to my qualitative guns and drew on my knowledge of technological advances.
It seemed to impress the analysts who are used to crunching purely quantitative data.
But who knows?
The most demoralising was the geography quiz. It was based on the company’s areas of consultancy so some areas I failed miserably.
My quickness failed me at the best of times.
I wrongly labelled Arizona as New Mexico thinking the dot was placed just west of the panhandle.
I realised today that the team is truly energetic and inclusive.
I’m quite liking getting to know the team.
There are more faces to know, but each has their own unique twists.
The day ended in Flight Club.
A venue for social darts, alcohol (orange juice) and fun.
There are four game modes which place competitors in teams and as individuals.
Before you get started they take a group photo and a boomerang — very Instagram era.
I got paired with the manager who recruited me and we won a game convincingly.
Guessed he hired me for the right reason.
I think it’s always hard to force yourself into an already well-defined structure.
It’s hard when you’re not from the same thought process. Although some of our personalities aligned (we did the 16personalities test).
I think I’ll take another week to get used to the system at the company, but the support couldn’t be better.
Intern away day.