Hannah, a Water & Environmental Technology major, interned at Guardian SCS this past summer.
Guardian CSC is a full-service water treatment company serving commercial and industrial clients with a broad set of solutions for potable water and legionella, cooling water, boiling water, bulk delivery, monitoring, and wastewater systems. Its comprehensive products and services include water treatment plans, water treatment system design, and water treatment system monitoring.
What does your day-to-day look like at the internship?
Every day is very different! There are four people I train with regularly and each day I ride along with one of them. We drive to various customers to service and test their water to make sure the results uphold our standards and the standards of that customer. We talk to the maintenance staff, run tests, and create reports showing everything we find and interpret in those tests to send to the customers.
What is something you were surprised to learn in your time as an intern?
I became inspired to learn about the equipment we were running tests on. We sell chemical treatments to treat water but in order for the chemistry to work properly, the equipment needs to run smoothly, too. I thought I would be most excited about running tests on the water, which I do enjoy, but troubleshooting when equipment is malfunctioning or a test result does not come back as we expected is intriguing to me and makes me want to learn more!
What’s been something challenging about your internship?
There is a lot of information to retain, and the learning curve was quite large when I started, which made it difficult to truly immerse myself in the field/training at first. I understood it more with time and the more I understood, the more I wanted to continue to learn.
What has been the best thing about your internship experience?
Being on the road every day, not behind a desk, and meeting new people as well as building relationships in a new area of my life have been the best parts of my internship experience.
Would you recommend seeking out an internship to other students at Thaddeus Stevens College?
Absolutely. I believe it is the best thing an incoming second-year student can do. It allows you to learn about what you like and do not like, you gain more experience in your field than you will in a classroom, and I believe it prepares you for your future more than I expected. The knowledge you walk away with is exciting and allows me to feel even more ready for my final year of school!
How do you think this experience will help your future?
This experience has allowed me to build relationships with people even outside the company I work with. Relationships and knowing someone can help you reach your goals a lot faster than your own. It has allowed me to realize more of what I do want to do when I graduate and what I do not want to do. The internship you choose over the summer can turn into a career or it can create a stepping stone into a career you did not yet realize you wanted. It has certainly gotten me even more excited about my future after Thaddeus Stevens College!