The day I snuck into the Engineering career fair...

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Friday 2 October 2020 11:10 AM

The day I snuck into the Engineering career fair...

I found Rolls-Royce by sneaking into an engineering career fair at my college, the University of Virginia (UVA).

I’m a Statistics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, not the Engineering school, so technically I wasn’t invited… but I made it inside anyway. I saw a super long line by one booth and thought I needed to see what all the fuss was about.

A flashy banner advertised the “Rolls-Royce International Internship” and I was intrigued. The requirements said engineers only but when I got to the front of the line, I talked about my Statistical Machine Learning background and stressed that artificial intelligence (AI) was a field they didn’t want to miss out on. Thankfully, the Rolls-Royce recruiters recognised they were limiting their program by excluding non-engineers and chose me to be one of the three UVA international interns.

I was placed in the London, UK, Rolls-Royce Group headquarters, with the Group’s data innovation catalyst, R² Data Labs.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, my dreams of drinking afternoon tea by the Thames were quickly re-adjusted, and I was just thankful to be safe and working virtually from home with my family. Despite being virtual, I was immediately swept into the fun culture of Rolls-Royce.

On the first day my phone was ringing off the hook with people just calling to say 'Hi!'. Our video calls became such a cool glimpse into others’ reality, such as hearing about my co-workers run-ins with monkeys stealing fruit through the window in India, and groaning about the “drab” weather in the UK.

My supervisors listened to my interests and placed me on two teams; one through the London AI Hub, where I could work with Natural Language Processing algorithms; and another called the Digital Culture team that focused on preparing for the digital world of tomorrow. I felt like this split between technical and conceptual was perfectly tailored to me, and I couldn’t have wished for a better placement.

Preparing for the digital world of tomorrow

Through the Digital Culture team I was made Project Manager of an app to help children understand the innovative, sustainable technologies used at Rolls-Royce.

I had 10-15 people from many different areas of the company offer assistance right away. During the first meeting I was so nervous, being an intern leading a group of older professionals, and I felt like I did a terrible job. However, right afterwards my manager Manisha called and pointed out the strong parts of my meeting, which meant so much to me and helped me be a lot more confident.

I did a lot of research on educational apps during this time and I was able to let my creative side shine as I designed a storyboard for the app and wrote the content for the lessons in the game. I am so incredibly proud and excited to see the app go live in the next month. I can’t wait to send it to every person I know and say “look what I worked on this summer!”

Looking back, my STEM background helped me understand and summarise the technologies described in the app, but my liberal arts experience in design, sustainability theory, and writing helped bring the app to life. I’m proud of myself for demanding a seat at the table despite not being an engineer, and thankful to the Rolls-Royce recruiters who took a chance on me.

As I enter my final year of college, nothing is the same as it was pre-pandemic. However, my virtual internship with Rolls-Royce taught me how to make the best of a pandemic-altered situation. My living room was no London, but I still had an incredibly rewarding and fun summer getting to know coworkers from all around the world. This has inspired me to look at my final year of college with optimism and the tentative hope that distance doesn’t have to mean distant, and memorable experiences can take place virtually.