It’s how internships are supposed to work.
A high school student takes an internship at a company, grabbing the chance to learn about the company and its industry while getting some real-world experience.
Meanwhile, the company introduces itself and its industry to a member of the future workforce, assesses whether the student’s a good worker and, along the way, adds some youthful energy to its workplace.
In a few years the former student gets hired as a full-time employee.
Sure, that how it’s supposed to work. But does it ever really work that way? It did for Isaac Smith and Mursix.
By accepting a Conexus Internship with Yorktown-based Mursix between his junior and senior years in high school, Isaac says he forged a relationship that continued while he earned his engineering degree at Purdue University and then led to a full-time gig after graduation. Now he’s a design engineer at the 200-employee firm that manufactures components for automotive, healthcare and other industries.
“It’s a great feeling knowing that what I do actually matters and goes into products people use every day,” Isaac says.
Not that Isaac had this perfect scenario in mind when he took the internship. He admits that he didn’t have a long-term plan at the time. One of his Yorktown High School teachers recommended the program, it seemed like a good idea, so he applied, he says with a bit of a shrug. Until he started, he really had no idea what Mursix did or how he might fit in.
Fortunately, he says, Mursix made it easy for him to learn, making sure he got to experience the various steps involved in the design and manufacture of the firm’s products, including the way various departments collaborate along the way. This wasn’t a “busywork” internship, he says. He got a front-row view of how things worked.
A solid math and science student throughout school, Isaac says he has always been fascinated by engineering and hands-on learning experiences, but he had no idea what professional die design was. By the time he completed his internship, that’s what he wanted to do for a living.
Mursix Co-owner and VP of Business Development Susan Carlock says Isaac fit in quickly at Mursix because he was eager and inquisitive, adding that even people who have been at the firm for years value the fresh ideas and new perspectives he brings to projects.
A self-described roller-coaster nerd who spent a summer working at Cedar Point amusement park, Isaac says he knew he would probably end up in a field related to some kind of engineering, but he didn’t know where that would lead. Now he feels like he’s found his place, shaped by a die that was cast when he said “yes” to an internship.
