Here's how you can maximize networking opportunities during a System Administration internship.

I try to get my students to understand that you’re not going to impress your mentors by bombarding them with question after question. Take a breath and develop your listening skills.

Ideally, interns spend their time working on relevant projects, learning about the field, making industry connections, and developing both hard and soft skills. Internships sometimes even lead to full-time job offers. What is this? Summer internships are typically

If you can practice at home…if you can do the simple things perfectly, your mentors are much more likely to let you try harder and more complex anything. I overheard an attending tell his resident that they need to practice with the tools. In the case of osteo surgeons it was make things with wood so you’re comfortable with similar tools in the OR. For networking add lines to your home and build a killer home network. For systems, build a killer Raspberry Pi home server. Bottom line, if you struggle with the simple stuff, your mentor is going to be reluctant to give you more meaty projects. You don’t just learn on the job, heck read industry journals while you do your morning ambulations.

If you feel over your head, practice your listening skills. See if you can tag along to industry meetings if only to help your boss take notes. Then wrangle to do a report on what your heard to your peers. Nothing helps you learn a topic than teaching about it.

Social media a great, but like anywhere else there be trolls. Take what social media has to say with a grain of salt and make sure you don’t treat it as gospel. Try to get confirmations from several sources rather than treat social media as gospel.

A mentor needs to treated as a person doing you a huge favor. Nothing is going to kill their willingness to give than to have something they said to you l, blow up in their face. Always ask before parroting their opinions publicly… oh yeah if you don’t know something as a fact, make sure you tell that person that’s it’s a guess. Never never never pass a guess off as a fact. Such actions are a sure way to get a mentor to abandon you.