LINK Internships
LINK is part of the Animas High School curriculum. It is an opportunity for juniors to explore a professional field and discover what they might want to pursue in the future. LINK typically lasts 3 weeks and is at minimum 90 work hours long. During these internships we worked on projects to prove the expertise that we have gained.
For my LINK I worked with StoneAge Waterblast Tools in Durango. At StoneAge they use high pressure water for many applications in such as cleaning heat exchangers or clearing pipes. StoneAge is a company that is based in Durango, but has greatly expanded, having vendors all around the world. At StoneAge I worked on many different things including competitor tool testing, which I chose to be my project for LINK. The goal of this testing was to determine if the tools that StoneAge is making requires an update due to competition from other companies. In order to do this quantifying the effectiveness of the tools is required. This information can be used to find the weaknesses in the current design to determine if it is worth diverting resources to developing a new solution. Unfortunately the rest of the details of the experiment and the results cannot be discussed due to an NDA. The information that I gathered proved to be very useful in deciding weather or not to move forward with the development of the tool. The role that I played at StoneAge and an intern was beneficial. I developed great relations with many of my co-workers and helped them with their task, insuring to never take any time away from them that they did not give to me so that I could learn. Overall I was a positive influence on both my work and the community at StoneAge. |
LINK Reflection
Coming into my 3 week LINK internship I had many skills that proved valuable. I worked at StoneAge the previous summer so I was very familiar with how things operated there as well as general understanding of how most of the tools worked. This gave me the great opportunity to be able to talk in great detail about what different engineers were working on and talk about their jobs in great detail. I found that the specificity of my knowledge and the interest that I showed made them very excited which led to great conversations that increased my knowledge of engineering. It is because of these connections that I made that many of my co-workers gave me great advice on how to pursue my future. During my LINK being able to work independently from instruction was necessary to being beneficial. Even if it is grabbing a wrench for my mentor before he needs it or providing your own thoughts on how to resolve a problem. Showing that you are engaged with what is happening and the greater meaning of things is vital to leaving a good impression which leads to greater responsibilities. I was valuable to StoneAge because I was able to help with many tasks and work independently. I got work done without taking time away from my co-workers. This experience was very valuable in my planning for the future. Currently I am taking college math classes that are almost exclusively for engineers. This is a very difficult class and takes up a large amount of effort for many of these engineers to be. Especially in comparison to a CAD class which is used every day by almost every engineer. Throughout my LINK I saw very little application of these topics but rather the ability to solve complex problems which is indirectly learned in these classes. When talking with many of the engineers there, the most valuable experiences from college were experiences from clubs like the F1 team or classes like machine design. For me, this helped prioritize my goals in college.