Summer Shenanigans

It was an eventful Summer!

Summer is the time for internships, travelling, and living life!
This Summer, I returned to SpaceX for a third time. I was working as a Starship Vehicle Engineering intern based out of Hawthorne, California (near LA) and travelling back and forth a good amount to Starbase, Texas (Southernmost tip of Texas). My job involves a lot of overall-vehicle work for the Ship portion of Starship; more details on what I have been doing can be found on my LinkedIn.

There are some cool pictures at the end of this post.
But first, I feel like something that often gets overlooked is having a work-life balance as an intern at any company. Internships are great opportunities to learn different subjects, gain hands-on experience, network, and maybe even secure a fulltime position if you are really passionate about the company. However, keep in mind that this is also YOUR time to get a feel for if you like the company in different aspects. Are you passionate about the thing you are working on? Could you see yourself working on your team every day? If you work at this pace/hours/frequency, how do you emotionally, mentally, and physically feel? Does this work/position fulfill you? Do you need more or less time to touch grass? Thus, I highly recommend treating your internship like a trial run for how your life would be like in a full time position. Do you want to travel frequently? Do you want to be adamant about going home at 5pm on Fridays? What are some personal boundaries that you need to draw for your happiness? Do you love that 8am-8pm grind? Do you like the area that you would be living in? There are no wrong answers! Only discoveries about what would make you happiest in life and a fulltime career.

Now to cue the photoreal 🙂

SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, California
View of Downtown LA from Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory at Sunrise (Photo 1)
Griffith Observatory at Sunrise (Photo 2)
The Starship Shrine
This entry was posted in 2023 - 2024 and tagged , , by Isabella. Bookmark the permalink.

About Isabella

Hometown: St. Augustine, FL Campus Involvement: Society of Women Engineers (SWE), Project Manager/VP of Women's Baja SAE Team, FAA-related Research Job, College of Arts & Sciences Student Council Chair of Engineering Physics Why I chose Embry-Riddle: There are two big things that really pushed me to apply/attend to ERAU. One was the tremendous amount of hands-on experience that I could get just by asking to be a part of projects, teams, and research. The other was the numerous program-specific, non-gen-ed classes that started as early as freshman and sophomore year which made me excited to learn and apply concepts as soon as possible.

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