Starting my internship was incredibly nerve-wracking, as I knew I would be surrounded with professionals at different ages and with different experiences. I also had limited experience and background on the company's focus, and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to learn about their goals fast enough. However, I quickly bonded with my direct mentor, an alumni from UW BioE, and found that my skills learned at the Nance Lab were still very transferrable to industry. The learning curve was definitely more extreme, with several experiments ran each day and some of my first assignments including literature review and trying to learn as much as possible. However, I felt like I was able to integrate as a worker relatively quickly, and was able to find coworkers with more similar backgrounds to connect with.
This experience gave me a lot more confidence in entering a new position post-graduation. Although I had no clue where I might have ended up - and currently still don't have a strong idea - I knew that the skills and experience I learned from my internship would prepare me well. I was able to learn that older professionals are still people, and usually open to help out if you ask. Even the scariest coworkers or those that seemed least excited about having an intern still had good advice to give and were willing to help out quickly when I requested. Those that were extremely willing to help would even give significant background or flesh out ideas with me and my mentor. My mentor was also very comfortable with the teams, having connected well with everyone, and was very open to asking for and offering help to anyone. I felt like I was able to learn a lot from her and her ability to interact with her coworkers, and make the most out of my time there.
I also ended up forming a close group with my mentor and a couple other research associates around my mentor's age. While they were all at an age I wouldn't have interacted with during school, I found that they weren't extremely different from me and the way I interacted with my friends, and it felt like another friend group that I could have made at school. This was reassuring for me to learn, and also was a form of proof of how far I had come since my freshman year in college. Reflecting back on the experience, I think I definitely could have opened up faster and made an even more intentional effort to connect with others there, but I don't think it would have significantly affected my experience there.