This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by yumnayasirr
After my 4th semester, reality hit me like a truck: “oh crap, I need to get an internship.”
Cue the stress, the anxiety, and the never-ending feeling of being left behind.
I applied everywhere, gave interviews, fumbled half of them, got disappointed… and finally landed an offer. Which I refused. Out of pure confusion. Then, like the clown I was, I called them back, apologized, and somehow still got the internship.
At first, I was excited. Corporate life looked shiny and glamorous in my head. I chose the Full Stack department, pumped to finally do “real dev work.”
…And then reality smacked me again.
The work? Mundane, boring tasks. The devs? Sitting at their desks from morning to evening like NPCs on repeat. Watching them, I thought: “Wait… is this going to be my whole life??” That’s when the depression arc kicked in. I couldn’t bring myself to work, couldn’t learn properly, and honestly started hating development altogether.
To make it worse, I had no solid base in dev, and supervisors just threw stuff at me with a vague overview: “Here, do this” — with zero idea of what I was doing.
So yeah, at that time I swore to myself: never touching development again.
But looking back now, I realize it wasn’t really “dev” that I hated. It was my unrealistic expectations colliding with reality. I also discovered something about myself: I don’t thrive when I just sit and binge-watch courses from start to end. I learn better when I explore tools, research, mess around, and then suddenly go “ohhh, I actually learned something.” That self-discovery was honestly worth it.
And okay… confession: the only truly good part of the internship? The free chai and food. Absolute fire. That alone almost made the whole thing worth it 😂
Lessons I Learned (a.k.a what I wish someone told me earlier):
- Your first internship is rarely glamorous. It’s not Google X or some high-paying startup — it’s grunt work, and that’s okay.
- You probably won’t have guidance. Most supervisors are busy and just throw tasks at interns. You need to be proactive about asking for help.
- Unrealistic expectations kill motivation. Thinking your first internship will be some dream job is setting yourself up for disappointment.
- Learning style matters. Some people thrive on structured courses; others (like me) learn best by exploring and stumbling into knowledge along the way. Figure out your style early.
- It’s okay to realize you don’t like something. That’s the whole point of internships — testing what clicks and what doesn’t.
- Don’t measure your worth by one internship. Everyone fumbles their first; it doesn’t define your career.
In short: your first internship might feel like a temporary deal breaker, but in reality it’s just part of the learning curve. At the very least… hey, free chai.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by yumnayasirr
yumnayasirr | Sciencx (2025-08-21T07:50:53+00:00) My First Internship: Was It a Temporary Deal Breaker?. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/21/my-first-internship-was-it-a-temporary-deal-breaker/
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