Hi everyone, I’m back for my final blog post and on the last day of internship at Ernst & Young (EY)! My final day consisted of a two-hour long checkout procedure at the office but after lunch, all the interns went over to Five Iron Golf. Five Iron Golf is located downtown in Market Square and is a basement golf simulator venue. It was a great last day and we had a lot of fun! But I have to tell you about EY’s internship conference in Orlando last week.
Our conference was rebranded following covid to EY Futures. We flew down to Orlando Tuesday and had a large dinner that night that kicked the conference off. I stayed at the Corranado Resort of Disney parks, but West Coast interns stayed at a completely different resort down the road. There were 3,900 interns represented mainly US interns, but also Canada, France, Japan, China, Mexico, and many other countries represented. There were also over 500 EY employees there as well. On Wednesday half of the interns woke up early to head to the Disney Epcot park to complete a resort-wide scavenger hunt for points. Although it was a hot day, I got the chance to get to know my team very well! All of the dining tables and teams were randomized the entire week to enable us the chance to meet the most people we could! The day ended with another dinner and speaker series back at the main conference hall. It was amazing to see over 4,000 people in one dining room during these dinners. Thursday I went to a speaker series expo where we could choose from 25 different speaker options to craft our own agenda for the four-hour day. I learned a lot about EY and different people’s career paths at the company throughout the day.
Our conference ended with a dinner that night and flights home at 9 am that Friday. It was a quick and action-packed conference. I met so many new people and learned about their different offices and internship experiences. It was an amazing part of the internship and one that many people at the company did not get to experience because of the pandemic.
To me a capstone should be a program where you show off all of the skills that you have gained over your pograms length. My time at the University of Pittsburgh has been fulfilling and has truly changed me as a person. My honors classes have been some of the highlights of that time with challenging professors and great coursework. They prepared me to take on the rigorous internship and navigate a professional work environment’s challenges.
One challenge that I continued to face in my internship was the company’s hybrid model and my team’s use of it. Working from home (WFH) will undoubtably continue in the future and every new graduate will have to learn to take advantage of it. With WFH, there are problems that exist and interns and first-year staff especially can get lost in it. What helped me out was staying in contact with my direct supervisors, peer mentors, and counselors. These employees are there to guide you and you have to take advantage and create those relationships.
In a future role I hope to take on management or strategy&transactions consulting at EY or another firm. This internship helped me narrow down career possibilities and showed me what I want in my work life.
These blog posts have helped tremendously in reflection on my rewarding summer experience! But that is all from me! Thank you for reading and go EY!