Internship Experience
Hi everyone! My name is Isabella Bianca Reaño, and I am a senior at the University of Memphis majoring in biomedical engineering. I would like to talk about my experience of how I got the internship that I am in now and how I am doing with it so far. This past May I became an R&D and Consumer Care Intern at W.M. Barr. I was able to find this internship through LinkedIn. I applied to many companies, namely, AutoZone, St. Jude, FedEx, W.M. Barr, Johnson & Johnson, MicroPort, and Medtronic. It was a very tedious and long process of applying to each of these companies. I had to revise my resume over and over again, learn more about each of the companies, deal with the technical difficulties of their online application processes, and worry about if I was going to get an internship. As an incoming senior at the time, I was concerned that I was not going to have an internship due to COVID. I thought I was running out of time.
I applied to so many companies out of desperation. I was turned down by MicroPort, Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, St. Jude, and AutoZone. W.M. Barr was the only company that was interested in furthering my application. I went through two interviews: one virtually and one in person. For the virtual interview, I studied every detail of my resume and learned as much about the company as I could. Although it was not the company I was hoping for (i.e. MicroPort, Medtronic, or Johnson & Johnson), it was an internship, and that was all I was happy about. Both interviews were a success, and I ended up getting the position. FedEx accepted me as well, however, I had to turn it down because I was already committed to W.M. Barr. Four months later, as an R&D and Consumer Care Intern at W.M. Barr, I have learned many new skills.
Although this internship is not directly related to biomedical engineering, it does teach me very useful skills such as organization, communication, and detail. My roles for my internship include processing, packaging, and shipping mold test kits, perform multiple titrations, water sampling, and stability testing, mail coupons and trigger nozzles to consumers, and manage the DampRid project by collecting, extracting, and presenting data on several stability projects. I look forward to what this internship has to offer for me in the near future.
