Josephine Chen
Internship: Personal Essay

For the past month and a half, I have been interning at Zoomlaw Attorneys- At-Law. This has been an eye opening experience for me, as it was both my first time working at an internship and my first time truly encountering the profession of law. While I’ve always had an interest in going towards the direction of law and have had multiple teachers and acquaintances suggest that I take up this area of study, I never actually had any friends or family that participated in the discipline. Basically, I was dreaming blindly with no practical knowledge at all.
Through this internship, I really do feel like I’ve learned a lot. Though as a high school intern, I could not participate directly in a lot of the processes going on in the office, just being able to take in the atmosphere around me was new and exciting. Being at a “traditional” nine-to-five job felt like quite a grown up thing to do, and gave me a small peek into what my future may have in store.
The people around me really made my internship a happy one, as they were all very kind and carefully explained to me what I could do to contribute. I was glad to be able to help with some translations during my time at the internship, because it was completely different from any other translating work I’ve done before. Instead of transcribing more colloquial forms of speech,
I was working with documents with vocabulary specific to the field, which was challenging but allowed me to pick up a number of terms that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Collaborating with Tina, especially, pushed me to understand more about the way certain documents are written and learn to work with another person’s expectations and needs in mind. She was extremely patient and willing to help me through the operation, which made everything so much easier. Researching different international investment cases was also something I’ve obviously never had the chance to do before. As someone who likes creating neat summaries and lists, it was quite a satisfying job to do. Reading about each case was extremely interesting and really revealed how complex these situations can be. Though I can’t say that I understood everything completely, researching helped me gain an overview of how things tend to work.
Though I cannot claim that I have suddenly gained a wealth of expertise on law through this internship, I can say that I have certainly grown because of the experience. Working in a professional setting and with people who are a part of the field I wish to someday study certainly meant that I had to be more mature and serious. I also had to work towards completing tasks that had more immediate deadlines than \ I was used to, which helped me improve my time management and organizational abilities. The feeling of accomplishment after finishing a translation or successfully getting a tricky piece of information onto the website was truly the highlight of my internship. There is no other emotion that can really compare to that.
I would really like to thank you for giving me this opportunity despite my age and inexperience. Being able to intern at a law firm in high school gives me the ability to look back and really consider where I want to go in my life. As I begin my college applications this year, I know that this experience will be an important reference point for me as I weigh my options and prepare for my future.
Once again, you have my most heartfelt gratitude. Thank you.