Half-way point!

I am now officially more than half way through my internship – and it feels like I just started yesterday. A lot has happened in the past two weeks – a couple of big client meetings, excellent team dinners, a new workstream and my mid-summer “pulse check”.

Let’s start with the work first. I completed the first project that was assigned to me (read previous post for details), and have now been assigned another workstream for the rest of the summer. The summer pulse check turned out to be balanced – with areas of strength and areas of improvement. I hope I end up improving on those “areas of improvement” by the end of the summer!

My next piece of work will influence a couple of key recommendations that we will make to the client. I am extremely excited, and a little apprehensive at being given this new responsibility. For one, the situation is a lot more ambiguous than my first project. And two, this project involves qualitative decision-making, definitely not my area of strength, in addition to the quantitative analysis. But the support from the rest of the team and other Booz folks has been tremendous. They have made themselves available to speak with me, exchange ideas, brainstorm and offer advice in a heartbeat. And being a Michigan guy helps too – there are tons of people here from Michigan, and the community feeling is stronger than ever. If I have one piece of advice to give it is this: reach out to people, and make the effort to ask if you are genuinely stuck at something. The absolute worst that could happen is that you remain where you started. Surprisingly, this did not come to me as naturally as I thought it would.

Now, for the fun part. The Chicago office is doing a fantastic job of keeping its summer interns entertained. They took us to the Taste of Chicago, organized a barbecue and are taking us on a cruise. Although my work keeps me really busy, I am trying to attend as many of these events as possible to get to know the people here. As I roll into the second half of the internship, the pressure will no doubt start to increase. But all in all, this experience has been immensely satisfying so far. Good times!

P.S: The Germany-Argentina game was an absolute shame. And we could not have asked for a more boring final. A disappointing world cup over all.