2 Teaspoons of Sugar, Please -- My Life as an Intern at S&P Global

2 teaspoons of sugar, please

How I begin my day, everyday, as an intern at S&P Global

I’m tired, groggy, and really grumpy everyday when I wake up at around 7 am because I have to reach the S&P office by 8 am as that’s when my shift begins. I live at a distance of about 40 minutes from the office which gives me ample time to ‘wake up’ but not quite. I occasionally use the help of some old/new Bollywood songs, in excess of 100 BPM, that some would term as ‘Cheap’. But that’s fine. A little bit of Govinda is sometimes all that I need for a good wake-up call. The other times, I make do with anything ranging from Drake to Shahrukh Khan songs.

Chatting with the internship program's supervisors during our induction.

Working on our 'Design Thinking' workshop.

  

So, I’m guessing that you guys have probably developed an image about me in your heads that might be or might not be exactly true, so let me just give you a brief picture that is actually true. For all my fellow interns, I’m probably the “annoying guy” who “asks too many questions”. I actually like that. I take that as a compliment.  A little background about this habit of mine: I have always been a very curious person, ever since my childhood, but I didn’t really ask many questions for the first decade plus a few more years of my life, though. That didn’t really turn out too well for me. I realised that if I keep nodding and faking that I understand something that I clearly don’t, it always come back to haunt me later. I used to be an extremely shy kid, too. So, I preferred to stay in my cocoon and not ask too many questions for the fear of being ridiculed by the teacher or laughed at by my class fellows or colleagues.

As my confidence grew, so did my ability to be vocal about my doubts or questions. Now I don’t even think about anybody or anything else because I’m confident that I want to learn and that I want to improve — that can only happen if I put myself out there. This change happened when, quite a few years ago, I realised that asking questions is a good thing. Let me rephrase that, asking questions is the best thing that you could do for yourself and others, no matter how much it “annoys” people. People can rob you off money, fame, power but not of your mind and the knowledge that it possesses. I prefer getting wealthy in that sense.

Now that you guys have a little more background about me, there’s something that I learned in the past few weeks of being an intern at S&P Global Market Intelligence, Islamabad, that I’d like to talk to you guys about. Well, not really talk but share, rather.

Tree planation activity.

At the end of our tree plantation activity.

How many of you love tea, coffee, or both? A lot of us, right? It’s an extremely important part of our day and some of us look forward to it instantly after waking up. Yes, I’m a tea addict. No, this blog isn’t about tea… well, not entirely. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, waking up in the morning these days is a really difficult task for me these days. I don’t really get time to eat breakfast or even get that morning tea that I’d been looking forward to at home.

Thankfully, there’s a tea/coffee machine at almost every floor of our office building.

My booth is on the third floor. So, the first thing that I see when I get out of the elevator is that tea machine/cooler/ kettle hybrid or whatever it is. I grab a cup, pour some hot water, add the powdered milk, put two teabags in, and add one teaspoon of sugar. I know what you’re thinking. “But the title says two teaspoons?”. Yeah, well. That’s the best part.

Working on our 'Design Thinking' workshop's project as a leader.

Presentation towards the end of our 'Design Thinking' workshop's project.

Call me weird, but so far, it’s worked pretty fine for me. Try it out sometime, and let me know if it works out for you too.

Our induction.

This is an article that I originally posted on S&P Global's 'Hub' -- their own internal social media platform. I uploaded it there during my internship, last year. It got a great response then. Thought I'd share my experience with everyone else as well.