July 14, 2022
Suck it up, Rory. You’re an English major for goodness sake! You’re used to asking for help with essays! How is this any different?
As an Instructional Design intern at AdvancedMD, a medical software company, I was assigned to create materials meant to help clients understand how to work with our company’s software.
The software made it easier for receptionists, nurses, doctors, and techs to input and manage patient information. A lot of times this included insurance charges, medical orders, and appointment scheduling. Boring stuff, right?
My job, the most exciting one, in my opinion, was to help create videos showing these clients where to plug in certain numbers, where to record medical orders, and do other doctor-y things.
For the first month and a half of my internship, I had been working on rebranding and updating our help videos. I plugged in new toolbars, screenshotted a bunch of images, and inserted new introductions.
Not to toot my own horn, but I was independently blowing through these small projects, completing video after video, proud I didn’t have to ask for guidance.
My supervisor, who had worked at the company for nearly ten years, was surprised at the pace I worked, happy to keep piling on small projects. But, I felt like I was ready for a bigger challenge. I wanted to do more than just day-long projects. I wanted to feel more useful.
So, one day, in the middle of my internship, I made up my mind and asked my supervisor for a bigger, heavier project with more rebranding, more updating, and even MORE script changes.
I was assigned a handful of bigger projects–videos that required major script and audio changes, brand new graphics, and large chunks of re-recorded pieces of the software–and quickly realized I didn’t understand how the software worked at all.
I had trouble, for example, navigating through the tabs… to get to the other tabs… to get to other tabs!
I couldn’t figure out where to see our theoretical “patients”, the ones we used to make these how-to videos, where to plug in numbers, and every other important thing that I probably should have known, considering I was halfway through this internship.
I felt incredibly discouraged. Up until that point, I had been able to figure things out on my own and produce useful content. Even I could easily follow the videos I updated to navigate to the important parts of the software.
But, for whatever reason, I was stuck. I wasn’t able to dig myself out of this rut. I felt left behind, unable to move forward at all.
How had I gotten almost two months into my internship without realizing that I knew NOTHING about the software we were using, about the tools we were using?
Those feelings hit hard. Not being able to find my footing on my own was really difficult for me to process. I had never needed to ask for help, asking felt like risking my independence. I hated to admit that I was lost and it felt like too much of a weakness to admit.
Suck it up, Rory, I thought, trying to find some courage and set aside my pride. There was some mental block preventing me from showing any vulnerability. All I needed to do was to send a message to my supervisor…
But it’s admitting that I’m not a good intern. I don’t want to show that I don’t actually know anything! What will that do for me? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
All I had to do was type “Hey! I’m stuck on this video, I can’t find where to access the reports! Can you…”
No, I can figure it out on my own!
No, you can’t. You’ve sat here scouring the software for HOURS. You can’t do it on your own. Why can’t you just send the message?!
But I can do it alone! It’ll just take me a few extra hours!
You don’t have a few hours! Just… press… SEND! Closing my eyes, I jabbed the “ENTER” button, sending the message to my supervisor who was sitting literally three desks away. I took a deep breath… DONE. I did it… that wasn’t so hard!
Not two seconds later, I received a reply to my small plea.
“Sure. I’ll be over in a minute!”
How easy was that? Why did I panic so much? I knew she’d say yes! Who would leave you hanging if you needed help?
Honestly, I don’t know what made it so hard to ask. Was it fear of rejection? Was it not wanting to acknowledge that I’m clueless?
I think all these anxieties were controlling my thoughts. Because I was put in charge of these projects, I felt like I needed to start and finish them as independently as I could which was NOT the right mindset.
Feeling like I needed to be independent really wrecked my efficiency because I spent too much time trying to figure things out on my own, overthinking what I would ask my supervisor. I spent too much time debating if I really needed help or not (I obviously did).
This experience helped me to recognize that I held a highly stereotyped fear that supervisors aren’t approachable people. This stereotype leached into my brain causing so much anxiety about asking for help. I didn’t think that my supervisor would even be willing to help me, which was altogether ridiculous. My supervisor was the nicest, most genuinely helpful person I’d ever met.
Managing a project requires many things: asking for a project, collecting the components for the project, mapping out the time it takes to complete the project, and, finally, from time to time, asking for help with parts of the project.
Reflecting on this, the most important part of managing projects, for me, was asking for help. It was a steep learning curve for someone who thought they were so efficient figuring out things by themselves.
Ultimately, I realized that I wasn’t going to know everything, no matter how hard I tried. I just wasn’t!
My position as an intern allowed me to learn in an applicable way. It was really up to me to recognize my weaknesses and how I could build them up through professional practice, practical advice from coworkers, and applied use of the things I learned.
Asking for help is just one of the ways I realized that I could grow in my internship. Because I was stuck in this tough spot and had to rely on others to pull me through, I learned about the value of just asking.