Report about the student internship at clavis solutions

[authorBox image=”http://uzuner-solutions.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Jonatan_Praktikumsbericht.jpg” name=”Jonatan Fidus Blomeier”]In July this year, Jonatan Fidus Blomeier completed his two-week student internship at clavis. Trying to give him insights into the daily work of a software company, we let him accompany our different teams. This personal, partly ironic internship report sums up his impressions. By now, Jonatan also has a student job at clavis.[/authorBox]

I, 16 years old, living in Essen, student at Waldorf school, was looking for an internship, which, at our school, has to be done at the end of 10th grade. Instead of looking for a conventional internship for Waldorf students (gardener, forest ranger, “something artistic”), I decided to apply to my father’s company. As you should know already, this company develops customized software solutions – and yes, the sentence concerning Waldorf internships was ironic.

My expectations were low. I mean, really low. I anticipated corpulent, lazy people in their mid-fifties without any social competences who only feed on coffee and are alone and bored doing their boring work. But only one assumption proved to be right, the rest surprised me a lot: The people who work here are slim, have great social skills, and all of them are younger than my father (which is not difficult, I guess) – and they drink coffee.
Well, it all started with a bike, one of those left over from childhood days. On the first day of my internship, I went to work with this bike. It was a torture, so I have been keeping my hands off of it since then. On foot, you perceive the environment much better anyway.

My first day was a typical day for an intern: I helped to install a blind (no – not with .exe) and prevented a serious catastrophe (coffee without milk!) by going to the supermarket (1,5 % low fat, organic, please).

Afterwards, actually for the whole rest of the week, I looked different people over the shoulder and learned. I found it really interesting to see how the company is structured, and who undertakes which task. Also, I was happy about and even a little bit proud of the pleasant and fruitful atmosphere in the offices. Even though there are (and have to be) hierarchies, I did not get the impression of a dictatorship, but rather that of equal rights. Everybody could contribute ideas and suggestions; they were asked for and appreciated.

Among other things, I witnessed the first steps of the conception of the new website, on whose blog you can find my post now.

At the end of the first week, I was fed up and asked if I could take on small tasks myself. I created a small website, wrote a couple of articles and informed myself about a new PHP framework.

In the course of the two weeks, I got more and more enthusiastic and felt like part of the team. My opinion about people I would have called “paper pushers” before has changed, and so has my opinion about my father.

All in all, I can only say “thank you” for a great time (and for the student job).