The Internship

This blog post has been the hardest to write for me by far. In part, the challenge stems from trying to sum up 6 months worth of experiences into a few paragraphs. Even more challenging, this post marks the end of my internship here with KBSL Technologies. Well here goes…

My internship at KBSL has taught me more than I could have imagined. As a member for the Enterprise Networking team, I feel my duties were diverse, and ever-changing. Sometimes it’s tough to recall everything I have taken part in over the past months, but I'll list some of the interesting things that I was part of.

The primary objective of the Enterprise Networking Team at KBSL was to design, implement and troubleshoot new and existing networking infrastructure of the company's clients. This also included in increasing efficiency of existing networks when required and attending to infrastructure failures throughout the country.

During my time at KBSL, I got the chance to be involved in a massive upgrade in IT infrastructure of a major client in the banking sector. Therefore, I was able to gain experience in large scale island wide redundancy provisioned network implementations which included multiple technologies such as VPNs, IP Telephony, BGP routing, Wireless networking etc.

This project had the entire team working late hours (we loved working late 😍 ) all over the country visiting branches of the respective banks upgrading their existing infrastructure. It was more of a road-trip kind of deal because we got to spend our time quite nicely visiting a lot of places in Sri Lanka.

Note that the above images are quite neutral in their setting such that it doesn't compromise KBSL's policies.

What I’ve Learned:

• My Skill set: My internship has definitely given me a better understanding of my skill set and where my career may take me, but most importantly, I’ve come to learn that I am not alone. This job has taught me that almost everybody is in the same position. Very few college students know what they want to do, and it is something that is simply not worth worrying about.
• How to behave in the office: This being my first position in an office atmosphere, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. The environment at KBSL was quite relaxed, yet it taught me how to behave in the workplace. Simply working in the office and getting used to everything here has definitely prepared me for whatever my next position may be.
• Teamwork: Not everyone knows everything. This was the most important revelation that was pounded on me since I started working at KBSL. Everybody had a part in the work that took place, therefore working together as a team and communicating properly was something I learnt during my tenure.
• Managing Time: Since I had to balance college work, personal projects, the internship and some quiet me-time, managing time for all that was a nightmare that was full of compromises. It was quite difficult at times to even attend lectures after sleeping in late after work. Nevertheless I got through it 😎 .
• Rest: Since we were working nights on and off, everybody was off their sleeping schedule. This made us less productive and grumpy (maybe). But, learning to manage time to get some decent well deserved shuteye was a very valuable skill I learnt.

Before I end my brief blog post, I want to thank everyone at KBSL who helped me out in the simplest of means, truly, Thank you. This has been a great learning experience and I’ll be forever indebted to those who gave me a hand there.

Thanks everyone.