During my senior year of high school, I was introduced to the P&G Jumpstart Program. I applied with hopes of having an opportunity to experience my first time working in I.T and getting paid to do it. Later on, that year I received an email regarding setting up an interview and I was beyond excited. I replied back to set up the interview and got it scheduled for the following week. The interview went great and shortly after I received the great news that I was accepted. I then started my 10-week journey learning about P&Gs history and different things in I.T. This experience gave me the opportunity to learn different coding languages, data analytics, and to come out of my shell by presenting my knowledge. My time at P&G had started to come to an end but my manager gave me the opportunity to come back for another 10 weeks in the Summer for a full-time paid internship. I couldn’t pass up on this opportunity and applied after my time during the program was over. I graduated Highschool & career technical school and then I got the news that I got accepted for the Summer Internship and everything seemed to be going great for me.
During my time in the Jumpstart Program, I was working at Jets Pizza. This new opportunity for the summer gave me the chance to resign at Jets and pursue a career in I.T which I longed for. The summer internship finally started, and I was absolutely ready for it. 
The first couple of days were bootcamp covering P&G, a recap of the information covered in the Jumpstart program, and how to be prepared to work in a mass sized company like P&G. After the bootcamp was over we got introduced into our projects, our project members, and our project managers. We had a group meeting to meet our new managers and to go over the scope of our incoming project. There was a saying used before we even started our next 10-week adventure, and it was “The first couple of weeks is going to be like drinking from a fire hose.” and it absolutely was. The amount of information we had to learn before we even started our projects was massive. It definitely was not for the weak minded because you really had to give your time and energy to learning what was necessary. The first couple of weeks were very tiring with all of the information we had to learn but it eventually got better.
During my time I worked on two different projects. The main project was automating EVP Patching where I worked with two other members, two different project managers, and multiple employees within our department to learn different processes. The second project I had was to improve the internal and external features of the company’s Veterans Affinity group with a different set of group members.
The 10-week internship was broken up into the following layout: Bootcamp, 5-week progress presentation and the final presentation. Learning a bunch of different coding languages was hard enough, the presentation was another ball game for me. As someone with social anxiety, presenting is not my strong suit. I knew going into the internship it was something I would have to overcome. During the 5-week mark presentation we traveled to the Cincinnati office to give our presentation and I was extremely nervous. I ended up getting through the presentation and it felt like so much weight was lifted off my shoulders. I then continue to give a 5-week mark presentation for my second project and then focused back on the projects at hand.
Coming to the end of both projects we ended up getting them finished and now it was time to give our final presentations. We prepped for both presentations and then traveled to the P&G MBC office to go on stage and present.
I remember for the first project my group was the first one to go up. I was nervous the entire drive there and waiting for our group to be called. We got called up and it was time. We gave our 20-minute presentation with our nice clothes on, mics in hand, and with the crowd filled. After the presentation everyone started clapping and I felt so relieved. After the presentation was over I only had a couple more days left where I gave my final presentation for my second project and finished some outstanding work for my first project. I am so grateful for my time at P&G and for all of the people I met there. It was truly an amazing experience that I will never forget.