This week I am posting about how the skills I have learned throughout college have impacted my work here at Indium Corporation. As I mentioned in my first blog post, I am currently entering my senior year at Clarkson University. I am studying global supply chain, and I have a minor in project management, and human resource management. I can certainly say that what I have learned in school has been applied to my internship, but not in the way one would think. I have applied a lot more from my minor classes than from my major.

Supply Chain is a broad field of study that includes multiple areas of business. The definition of a supply chain management is the overview of a product from its conception, all the way to the end user. Based on that definition, I thought that, for sure, some things I learned in my major would appear in my internship. So far, I have not applied much of what I have learned, but instead, learned a lot of new information. I now know how to use advanced features in Excel, Power BI, Adobe Prime, and some computer programming languages. None of these programs, except for basic Excel, were things that my professors taught me. Not only had they not taught me these things, but they also didn’t even mention them. In my opinion, this is the main drawback of colleges and institutions. There is such disconnect between the needs of companies and those of schools.

With this being said, I have learned quite a bit from my college education that has allowed me to thrive at my internship. One thing I have taken from my project management minor was the ability to keep my work organized. Right now, I am currently working on several projects, all with varying deadlines. It is too much to keep all in my head. The ability to keep my work organized not only benefits me, but also my coworkers. I was able to make a Gantt chart, and share it with my colleagues. We are all now on the same page, and they know what I am trying to accomplish.

Another resource I was able to draw upon was from my human resource minor. I am always running around the office talking to coworkers. My professors in my human resource classes have given me the ability to interact with all these different people. I was also able to have a broader knowledge of how a company works before I started.