I’ve spent the summer coding about boozeries, city council candidates, renewable energy contracts and more. I’ve learned a lot, and I want to pass some of those lessons on to the interns of the future.

Hello future intern,

First things first: you can easily tailor this internship to what you want to learn. The scope of the online projects department extends from data wrangling and manipulation for reporters to creating complex news apps. I chose to focus most of my time on improving my coding chops, but I also worked on a couple data visualization projects when I had time. I ended up calling myself the ‘Data Visualization & Online Projects Intern,’ but I’m sure once you decide what to focus on you’ll think of something else to call yourself.

The most important piece of advice I can give is to constantly think about the skills you want to learn and improve. My most valuable experiences were when I started a random project to learn a skill I had never tried before. You’ll get the most out of this internship by challenging yourself, whether that involves pitching projects of asking for ways to help with ongoing projects. Plus any time you come to a dead end, chances are someone sitting close to you will be able to guide you down the right path.

There’s no one in the newsroom more helpful than the three people sitting around you. When Google fails to provide an adequate answer to the code issue you’re facing, or if you just have a random question about something you’re interested in, your deskmates will help you out. I can’t count the number of times I have run out of ideas, thrown a question out to the group, and quickly figured out a solution to my problem.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to use your googling skills to find answers. That’s half of what being a programmer is all about. Plus you don’t want to inundate your coworkers with simple questions that the internet has already answered. But there is a time and place for both. Sometimes it’s better to spend a minute asking a question than an hour fruitlessly searching Stack Overflow.

At the end of the day, whether you’re working on data-driven stories or Django-based news apps, you’re in a fantastic place. You’ll get to work with wildly talented people, and hang out with them outside of work too if you’re lucky. Who knows, maybe you’ll get to come back after the internship is over.

Good Luck, Adam Humphrey

Previous: One cool trick to inspect live objects in your Django app with a standard Python function

Next: Aggregating and querying school ratings