I spent the past two months as a System Analyst intern in the Office of Quality at Educational Testing Service. For those of you who don’t know, ETS is the company that performs the academic research and assessment development for tests such as the SAT and AP programs. I’m going to perform a quick post-mortem on my experience there.
Pros:
Insight on a corporate environment
As with all college interns, I had no idea what lay beyond the ivy-covered gates following college graduation. You get your diploma, march through Fitz-Randolph gate, and then are thrown out into the terrifying adult world. ETS was a perfect transition to introduce me to the rigors of the corporate world.
One thing that I must stress is that ETS is not your typical corporate environment (the people at ETS constantly impressed this fact upon me). The culture at ETS is absolutely phenomenal and eye-opening. The mission of ETS is to advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide, and ETSers (that’s what ETS employees are called) truly believe in this mission. It’s heartening to see an organization so devoted to “the back of the badge” (the mission is printed on the back of all ETS badges).
I think the greatest thing about ETS culture is the willingness to engage in discourse and discussion about people’s work. I constantly joke that as a summer intern, I am the second most powerful person (behind the CEO) in the organization, because ETSers will move heaven and earth to try and meet with me. In my last four weeks at ETS, I contacted over twenty ETSers to schedule one-on-one meetings, and every single one scheduled a meeting with me. I even cold-emailed the President and CEO of ETS, Walt MacDonald, and got the chance to sit down with him and have an enlightening hour-long conversation with the man. It truly speaks volumes about your organization and its culture when the CEO takes time out of his day to meet with a mere summer intern.
Behind the scenes look
As previously mentioned, ETSers are remarkably generous with their time. As such, I scheduled over twenty “curiosity conversations” with ETSers across the company. I met a lady who worked in the IT department for cybersecurity, a man who started out in finance and then came to ETS (what an interesting journey he shared with me), three absolutely brilliant research scientists from ETS’s Center for Advanced Psychometrics, and so many more people.
I think that in my eight weeks, I became as well-acquainted with the structure and interconnectedness of ETS as its veteran leadership. I visited ETSers in every major division at ETS and learned about their work. I really think that more people at ETS should be encouraged to schedule meetings with other departments (there really is much more leeway given to summer interns), as it truly is a marvelous ecosystem to learn about.
Brigham Library
ETS’s Brigham Library is located in Landgraf Hall, convenient right next to my desk.
Brigham Library had the best interlibrary loan (ILL) system that I have ever encountered (yes, it’s better than the one at Princeton too). On the first day, the librarians told me that I could get any single book I wanted with ILL. As you can probably imagine, I took advantage of that.
I became known as ETS’s-resident-crazy-intern-who-read-a-lot-of-books, and for good reason too. In my two months at ETS, I read over 60 books, and I was also anointed as the library’s heaviest user in company history.
Cons:
Corporate America
I don’t want to say that the corporate environment was stifling, but is was rather monotonous and predictable. This is of course no fault of ETS, but instead a transition from the exciting, chaotic college atmosphere to the disciplined and structured ways of corporate America.
During my internship, basically every single day was the same. I would wake up at 6:30am for the 7:45am shuttle to work. I’d spend the next nine and a half hours working (8:30am-5:00pm), come back home, and then workout at the gym. Then I’d take a shower, read a book and write a bit, and then get to sleep at around 10:00pm.
There were many moments where I had reached a mental roadblock and yearned to meditate for a few minutes or engage in an impromptu discussion about tennis with another soul (it did happen once), but I couldn’t. I don’t think that humans are meant to clock nine hour workdays for their entire lives.
Disconnect
Another critique that I have of corporate life (not ETS specifically), is that it seems to me that it doesn’t align properly with the higher education. I feel that my education at Princeton prepared me as well as humanly possible for professional work; ETS’s Chief Quality Officer Steve Pote (and my boss’ boss’ boss) told me this about Princeton (he’s a Princeton grad): “At Princeton, you learn how to learn.” However, the same can not be true of most schools in America.
The vast majority of American higher education is knowledge and information-based, probably adhering to the doctrine: “Knowledge is power.” Students are being equipped with the knowledge and technical expertise to succeed in today’s jobs. But the problem is that as the pace of innovation grows ever-faster, the jobs of today will not be the jobs of the future.
Thus, knowledge is not the most important; instead, learning dexterity and autodidactism are the currencies of the future. Most schools are not equipping students with the appropriate learning strategies, and are setting graduates up for mediocrity.
Final thoughts:
ETS was a phenomenal experience. If you had told me that I would be doing software configurations and metrics work for eight weeks in the summer at any other company, I probably would not have been hugely excited. But the wonderful people at ETS and the ETS culture truly made it a special experience. I met so many interesting people, who pointed me towards resources that would help me succeed. I suppose to sum up my experience at ETS this summer, I must turn to a quote from Paulo Coelho: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”