Kayelyn Jett

 

 

Definition: The ability to juggle many things at once, learn from mistakes, prioritize, and adapt to changes. 

 

Criteria: organized, willing to learn, open about needs, and maintains a positive outlook.

 

Situation: After my sophomore year in college, I attained my first internship at Expeditors, a logistics company, where I worked in their Ocean Exports department. My position involved a large amount of paperwork and when a worker quit the team, my position became much more stressful. Regardless, I expected to breeze through the summer depending on my strong work ethic to handle the extra workload successfully.

 

Task: However, as the pressure mounted and my responsibilities doubled within my role, finishing the internship with no mistakes became more and more improbable. The paperwork I was given to complete required meticulous examination, and at times, knowledge and experience I did not possess. As a summer intern, I was hesitant to ask many questions. After all, how hard can arranging paperwork and sending them to the correct destination be?

 

Action: Yet after mistakenly sending a huge bundle of paperwork and a large load of Goodyear tires to Russia instead of its true destination in Chile and trying, to no avail, to clear the mistake on my own, I knew I had to speak up. This led to my discovery of the need to and power of speaking up and owning your mistakes. Although I wanted to end my tenure at Expeditors with a spotless reputation, I decided the client’s needs were much larger than mine and the impact this mistake would have on them if left uncorrected was significant.

 

Result: From that point forward, I asked many more questions about the work I was doing and ensured everything I sent out or came across my desk was 100% accurate according to knowledge I possessed and of those with more experience as well. Also, I used this experience to inspire the Capstone project I designed at the end of my internship. My project eliminated the possibility of the mistake I made and allowed me to use this failing to add value to the organization-$45,000 to be exact!

 

Takeaway: My expectation of succeeding changed that summer and I realized how important it was to manage not only paperwork, but emotions and failures as well. The main lesson I gleaned from this internship was how to properly handle the situation when the outcome is not favorable and how to turn it around. Ironically, making mistakes, the one thing I feared would hurt the effectiveness of me as an intern the most, developed me as an employee and strengthened my work ethic more than a summer without mistakes.