So you’ve landed your dream internship. It’s exciting, frightening and confusing all at the same time. It’s also a great insight into an industry that you think one day you’d like to be part of.

Whatever the internship is – be it in a lab, office or even a zoo – the one thing you should expect is to have all your expectations shattered. That’s the whole point anyway, right? To get a better understanding of what the real world’s actually like?

Expectation: “I’m going to get deep insights into what the work’s really like.”

Reality: You get a brief glimpse.

While it would be absolutely awesome to get a 360-degree look into every facet of the organisation you’re interning at and truly understand every part of it, that’s often not the case.

In most workplaces there are so many cogs to the machine that it would take days to fully explain how all of them fit and work together.

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Most of the time, the people who you’re working with are so busy they can’t just stop and show you everything and. Oh and then there’s the fact that a lot of information is confidential!

Don’t get too bummed out about it though – it’s just one of those things you’ll get access to when you’re a bit higher up. Focus on understanding your cog and asking the right questions to understand it.

Expectation: “The work I’m doing will make a difference to them.”

Reality: Probs not.

When you spend a whole day putting your energy into something, it’s hard to realise that it may not be fully appreciated or make that much of a difference to your supervisors.

I once spent two entire days researching something, only for it to be condensed into one sentence in a report. It was a shock, but that’s reality.

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At the lower levels it’s usually going to be the case that you’re doing the administrative grunt work that a) is the easiest to do and b) so repetitive that no one else wants to do it. You just have to suck it up and get on with it. You’re the intern for a reason.

Expectation: “They’ll understand if I make mistakes.”

Reality: Yes, to an extent.

Obviously the people who you’re working with understand you’re new and don’t have a firm grasp on the entire situation BUT that’s not an excuse to be careless. Before you email/ask for help/upload/finish anything it’s best to double check. Triple check. Wait for a minute and then check again.

After that, it’s OK to make mistakes and ask for feedback. That’s why you’re there! It only starts to reflect badly when you make the same mistakes repeatedly. Take a notebook and write down the tips and tricks they tell you – it will save you (and them) a lot of time and frustration.

Expectation: “I might get a job offer out of it.”

Reality: You’ll get great experience and feedback.

The end game is to get a job offer at the end of the internship (and how great would that be?!) but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen. At the end of your stint it’s good to ask for an ‘exit interview’ to get deeper insight into how you went. It’s an opportunity for you to get some constructive feedback and to give them some feedback too.

And don’t stop there – because that grad job isn’t going to find itself is it? Keep working hard at uni and build up your resume so that when it’s time, you can apply for a grad/cadet job knowing you did everything you could.

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Whatever you do, make sure to stay open minded and say ‘yes’ to every opportunity presented! Even if that opportunity is taking advantage of the office biscuit jar.

Danica Lamb is a Laws Masters kid at UWA. She enjoys cheap coffee and ’80s pop music.

(Lead image: Devil Wears Prada/20th Century Fox)