What appears to be just a typical workday in the financial district isn’t so typical when you’ve got 25 new faces filing into the office. Wide-eyed and willful, these interns stand tall with their backpacks on their shoulders and their heads cocked to the side. While carrying a bewildered grin on their face, they are nonetheless ready to roll up their sleeves and join in on any work-related activity within their peripheral vision.

This is my third year participating in the Summer Internship Program at MarkMonitor and I’m thrilled to have two of the most eager and smart interns join the Digital and Content Marketing Team. Each time I prepare to bring new interns onboard, I think back to the lessons that my former managers taught me throughout my golden years as an intern and while over a decade ago, the stories, adages and experiences I gained overtime never grow old and I find myself repeating the same to these new interns.

The first few days of an internship is very exciting for many, especially when they get their first assignment. The work that they get gives them a sense of duty, purpose and the ability to grow and learn outside the confines of a classroom.

In one of the first meetings with my intern, I was giving him an overview of his role and responsibilities, and assigning him a few of the projects that he’d be taking on in the next three months. Wearing a big smile across his face, he pulled out a notebook and pen, and was ready to learn. While he scribbled down a few notes, I told him I had an opportunity for him and wanted to know whether he was interested in learning about event marketing. Just as I had begun to gauge his interest level and I asked, “Do you….” and before I could even finish my thought, he cut me off and enthusiastically exclaimed “Yes, yes I will or I’d like to. I’ll do it.” Anything could have followed that initial question such as data entry, stuffing envelopes, taking meeting minutes, etc. I hadn’t even gotten to the exciting part, nor came close to describing the assignment and he broke out with a relentless yes.

The First Lesson: A Positive Attitude and the Power of Yes

The very first lesson I learned when I was an intern was the value of saying yes. As a college student or a young professional, you’re at the start of your career and you may or may not know what you’re interested in, but you’ve accepted the role of an intern and you’re surrounded by people of all ages and backgrounds with years of experience on top of yours. You’ve got the potential to tap into their expertise, sit down and meet with them, interview them, get involved in their world and learn.

When I went into my first interview, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to get from this internship. I was pursuing a degree in visual design and was looking to find a role that would diversify my skill set, put my design knowledge to the test and gain general business knowledge — like all the others. With zero industry experience, I came across a job posting in the field of aerospace that piqued my interest. I remember reading the job description and coming across all these buzzwords like “program management” and “status reporting”, and a number of acronyms that made the role sound more important than it was.

Before interviewing with the hiring manager, I had heard from a number of interns who had already interviewed with him. Because they had a hard time wrapping their head around the responsibilities that came with the role, they decided to pursue other internship opportunities within the company but in different departments. I came into the interview with skepticism from my peers, yet a sense of curiosity. After speaking with the hiring manager, I too had difficulty understanding my role and what it is that I would get out of this ten week internship.

Following the interview, I was hesitant about accepting the role. Before I had the opportunity to respond, he told me to think about it and try it out for a few days. If it wasn’t a fit, then I could pursue another internship. I thought about it and said yes — and that was one of the wisest decisions I made during the time. Little did I know that taking on this internship I’d learn a tool that would follow me throughout the rest of my career.

If taking a leap of faith and saying yes opens up a new door and gives you an opportunity to learn something new, then listen to your intuition and continue to feed your curiosity. When I said yes, I gained a new friend and mentor, I learned how to develop a status report and run a meeting, I became more self-aware of my attitude, role and responsibilities. Within the first few weeks, I developed a lot of skill sets, learned to use various tools and software, and began using industry terms and acronyms by working them into my conversations with various business partners. Whether or not I used them correctly was another story, but that led me into my second lesson as a college intern, the importance of learning how to learn.

The Second Lesson: Learn How to Learn

One day as I was going about my normal work routine, one of my former managers came up to me and gave me a piece of advice, “Christina, it doesn’t matter what you learn as long as you learn. When you go to college, you learn how to learn.” The first time I heard this statement, I didn’t fully understand it. I’m in college. I’m pursuing a degree and a couple of minors. Of course I’m learning. It wasn’t until my second full-time job when I pulled away from my core strengths and learnings, did I truly understand the meaning of learning how to learn.

Transitioning from a visual designer to a project manager wasn’t as seamless as I would have liked it to be. When I accepted my second full-time position in healthcare, I felt exactly the way I did when I accepted my role as an intern — curious, confused and unsure of what this role entailed. Yet again, I said yes. I said yes to becoming a project manager. I mean, I can manage projects.

It was until my very first kickoff meeting did I truly begin to understand the role and what I signed up for. In the first few weeks of receiving my assignment and shuffling papers around, I was told to setup a kickoff meeting. I didn’t quite know what a kickoff meeting was, but sure, I could get everyone in a room.

On the day of the kickoff, a writer, designer and my manager joined the meeting. We all gathered in the room and I sat there, ready to participate in the meeting — and guess what, so did everyone else. They sat there with their pen and paper, and looked directly at me. I looked at my manager and must have had a “help me” look on my face. It was clear that they were all looking to me to run the meeting. That kickoff served as a wake-up call. I was no longer a visual designer. I was a project manager — a project manager who would need to manage much more than just “projects”. That’s when it hit me. I didn’t learn any of these skills during my college years and in the weeks to come, I was going to have to learn what it means to be a project manager. And that’s when I recalled those timeless words of wisdom of having to learn how to learn.

To this day, those wise words are ingrained in my mind and interwoven in my day to day. It’s the first thing I think about when I need to pick up a new skill, adapt to a new routine or habit, or view my current situation through a different lens. It’s what I hold on to and gravitate to when I’m in an unfamiliar situation or setting and I need to get my bearings. It’s what I now share with my colleagues, my team and any new interns who join my team.

While many people may or may not stumble into their calling, they will come across situations that extend outside of their comfort zone. They will switch gears and go from one job to the next. They will take more classes, attend conferences, explore new interests and find new callings. In each of those situations, they’ll need to acquire new skills, adapt to new ways of thinking and learn how to learn. They’ll come upon circumstances that may not be so clear and evident at the time, and they won’t always know how to respond, but they ought to be inquisitive, curious and open to saying yes.

On top of these wise words from my internship experience, I’d like to say thank you to my former managers who have given me these powerful words of wisdom that opened new doors, the encouragement to learn and push past existing boundaries, and the ability to try new things. A decade or so later, I’m still putting this advice in front of everything that I do and I hope to inspire the same in others.