Finding Yourself through Valpo
I held off on writing this blog for as long as possible because frankly, I didn’t know how my internship experience would develop. When I got the email asking if I would be interested in an internship position at DHL Shipping and Logistics as a Talent Acquisition intern, I hesitated. I have a great opportunity that I am very thankful for, and I was enjoying all of the work I did, but I had yet to find my community here and I was struggling with making new friends. I quickly realized how lonely life outside of my Valpo community could be, how difficult it was moving states, and how hard it was finding friends outside of the college environment.
However, because of the challenges I faced in the first few weeks, I was able to learn some very valuable things. I was able to see how unique the Valpo community is and how easy it was for us as students to take advantage of that without realizing it. Not everywhere has the community Valpo has built, and there are a lot of amazing people that surround us here. It is something that I had known but not realized until I was in a place without the supportive community that I had found in Valpo.
I learned how to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I had to continuously reach out to people I didn’t know to set up conversations. I also tried to create a way for the interns in my building to meet each other, as well as give feedback and suggestions to industry professionals who had way more experience than me. Furthermore, I had to figure out how to function in a work environment. I have learned a lot about who I am and who I can be through these struggles, and I have gained confidence in areas that I didn’t even know existed.
I have made connections with professionals and learned how to manage my time in the office while also managing my time outside of work. I have learned a lot about my habits and hobbies and along the way have figured out how I want to use those in the future. Through this experience, I have been able to make friends with people I have never thought I would make friends with and they have been able to help show me different views and ways of looking at the world that I never even thought about.
Nothing can really prepare you for a move to a new state with a new job, but I think Valpo does a great job preparing students for developing in these spaces. Valpo offers numerous spaces where we can have conversations with people who are different from us, and that in itself has done wonders for me. Being able to hold a conversation with someone who is different than I am and find some common ground to build a relationship is a skill that is hard to find and difficult to learn — yet I find myself entering into spaces like this at Valpo more often than not. In different organizations, I have to talk and work with people who have different opinions than I do — both about the direction of the organization and, for example, politics — and I find that those experiences, while difficult at the time, often lead to personal growth and a deeper understanding of how we all can cooperate with each other.
I am grateful for the opportunity I have to work at DHL, and I am grateful to Valpo for giving me the spaces and opportunities to prepare myself for environments that are unfamiliar. I look forward to seeing where I go in the future and how Valpo has prepared me in ways that I may not even understand yet.
Written by
Allison Plachta
