Internships provide us with exciting opportunities to gain relevant practical and hands-on experience in fields of interest.It consists of a week of learning, working on projects, and gaining new insights into the field in which we are interning. Because of my interest in software development, I had always wanted to work in a software company, and CAS enabled me to do so. For my CAS creativity experience, I chose to intern at Craftii, a software agency that specializes in providing software solutions to new startups and business organizations. This internship lasted about two months, and I gained a lot of experience in various specializations such as backend development, software planning, software development plan, tech stack planning, and so on.

This was one of the most well-paced practical experiences I’ve had in software development, and I learned a lot from my mentors who guided us throughout the internship. However, due to time constraints, I was only able to focus on the website’s backend development and spent a lot of time brainstorming and planning the startup process, as well as doing a little bit of programming. As an intern, I was primarily responsible for developing a software plan for the startup to which I was assigned; the simplified process entailed a lot of brainstorming, planning, template modeling, and executing. During this process, I wrote some PHP backend code for login/signup, contact form, and response sending through the server.

LO 1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

During my internship, I was able to assess my weaknesses while also learning new skills because it required a lot of hard skills. For example, I had to get my hands on different skills that I did not have and spend at least a week mastering them before working on the project, such as expanding my tech stack by learning new languages. It also made me realize how many soft skills I needed to work on, such as communication and critical thinking, which opened up a new learning curve for me during the internship. It is critical that we assess our weaknesses in order to develop them ahead of time in case they are required again in the future. 

LO 2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

I needed a lot of self-management skills, which was one of my weak points during the internship and became one of the major challenges that I faced during my time as an intern. Due to the fact that I had to balance my academics and extracurricular activities, I had to allocate time slots for my tasks and use a variety of organizational tools to plan my daily schedule during my internship period, which helped me gain self-management skills. After completing this challenge, I am better able to manage my time and tasks than before, when there were a lot of cross-outs and jumbling of my tasks, which I believe will help me in future endeavors that require multitasking.

LO 4 – Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience

During my time as an intern showing interest and passion in the work is one of the most prominent things that can keep you committed towards your internship and will help you in successfully completing it. I had to manage a lot of things together like academics, extracurriculars etc. helped me develop resolve and determination to complete the tasks on time and become more regular towards my schedule and other classes.

LO 5 – Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively

Collaborative work environment is something which can be beneficial to anyone who is trying to gain experience or learn something. As with my internship in Craftii, I was trying to gain as much practical experience as possible. This type of work environment gave me a positive note on my learning capabilities since I was able to get a lot of knowledge from my colleagues, work partners, and mentors. It was also one of my challenging/weak habits since I am not used to working collaboratively and was not able to utilize my skills as effectively as possible – which I believe I have developed to some extent with the help of this experience.