By the end of my 1st week, I have felt something I wanted to write about. But I didn’t get a chance, so I thought well it is not too late to write after two weeks. But then, I just keep postponing week after week until last Saturday which marked the end of my first month of internship at TNT. So I know if I don’t start now, I will never have chance to write this again.
After a month of working, my life got into another kind of rhythm. Monday to Friday, I get up at
Working is from
I thought that I would have about 3 hours each night to do something, such as writing blog. But, I am wrong. It seems working is really tiring though you don’t have to absorb as much new information as during term time. I guess the exhaustion come from the long hours spent outside and on the road. It eats your energy. So most of the time, I just have energy to take a bath and spend some time on Internet like checking emails. And then off to bed. When I wake up, another day just started again and soon I found out that Today is not so much different from Yesterday.
I would really like to talk a bit more about my work, but on the first day when I reported to office, they asked me to sign an agreement paper, promised not to disclose any information regarding their business. So I guess it is better not to write too detail on it. For Some general information, TNT is a Multi-National-Company in mails, express and logistics. It together with UPS, FedEx and DHL are the four major players in the field. Logistics is a new area that these express companies have gone into. I am working in their logistic side and study the operation of the entire system (as a system engineering major).
About the cliché question of whether studying is better or working is more enjoyable?
I still can’t quite give an answer. I think the main difference in working and studying is that when you are in school, you get to learn new knowledge everyday and then you finished some modules and proceed to the next level, but in working, you used what you leanrt in school and just apply it. When in school, there seems a clear starting and ending of each semester, each year. But in working, it is a continuous and endless process as long as the business keeps running. So you could be working 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year unless you take a leave.
And I would say most people’s work is of repetition nature, meaning today’s content is almost the same as the next day’s. So what makes a difference is the Weekend and Public Holiday. Yeah, I do appreciate them so much more now because you FINALLY don’t have to go to work for two days. It is a break from the monotone of life and you get to REST and spend your time as you wish. You can literally feel the difference on Friday. If people’s mood can be put into quantitative term and a graph is plotted for all the worker’s mood on the y-axis VS time on the x-axis. I think it will look like a curve with peak at Friday to Sunday and then drop sharply on Monday and stay horizontal till Wed, then slowly rise. But for services sector, like the express industry, people also get to work on Saturday and public holidays, so then it will not be too much difference to those people.
For Weekends, it is actually not at all a rest, to me at least. Saturday is usually spent on house cleaning and laundering. And if I am at Yu’s place, we will cook 2 meals which literally take all the time (Don’t forget to count in the cleaning time). So I was joking to Yu that I would really love to have a maid to do all these house chores for me only if they don’t charge so much (60 dollars per hour). And Yu said you wouldn’t need a maid until you can buy your own apartment. So when you only have enough money to rent a room, you will do the cleaning yourself since it is such a small space. And when you need help to clean a big enough space, you will also be able to afford a maid. On Sunday, I would give tuition in the morning and back to rest for half a day before resuming work on Monday.
Well, talking about Public Holiday, I am also got to appreciate much more of a multi-racial society.
But that is not the most creative thoughts on public holiday. On the Tuesday immediately after Versak Day, I was having my induction/orientation with the operation department. They attached me to the Ground Service Agent (GSA) to go out and see how they deliver the articles. The GSA I am with is a really funny guy. He said he hate public holiday the most because it usually is the busiest day just after the holiday. Like that Tuesday, he has to deliver 143 items while on normal days he usually finishes 50 and at most about 80. (And so, I followed him jumping out of the van - dashing into and out of each customer’s office and hop onto the van again. Averagely we spent about 1 minute for each customer and drive on. Really like playing Charlie’s Angels.) He suggested that it will be best to not have government appointed holiday while letting people to choose their leave whenever they want. So that there will be no interruption of the business and also no peak holiday season for expensive traveling. However, that will only be workable with assumption that some people would willing to work a lot more even when other people are taking holidays.
Well, I guess what I learn the most from this internship so far is What Real Working Life is like. I now do agree that what we learnt from school is indeed quite far from what the industry is needed. Maybe it is not a lot about knowledge, but more about common sense. What we thought is correct and workable in school could cause a lot of confusion in real work. Theories don’t always work, especially when you are dealing with people. People are not machine. You can program them to follow certain procedures day after day. And there is always variation and human errors.The school is taking a very theoretical and scholarly approach; while in real work, it is a very practical and operational approach. I would say they are just completely two different environments and cultures. And in real life, it is about survival and responsibility. What you do may seem simple, but you cannot afford to make mistakes because this is real business, it is about earning money. I guess that pressure is probably what makes people feel so tiring.
Thanks for your valualbe comments GuoGuo.
怡然自得 @ 6/6/2005 9:09:07 PMI really appreciate that you share the experiences with others. you have done a very good job.
Intern provides us a very good opportunity to get an understanding of worplace before we really enter the job market.
However i think there is another important thing that we usually ignore- Self-learning to be competent and excel in the workplace. In my understanding, intern is not just the opportunity to apply what we have learned. We ourselves also should observe the operations and find out what's more we can improve and what are the things we should get to know more. So basically it's know how to ask the right questions to build up your own learning.
蝈蝈 @ 6/4/2005 12:53:36 AM请Please leave your comment here